The Castle Crawlers
by The Great Red Dragon
Summary: While attempting to save their home from a mysterious phenomenon, four adventurers are inexplicably transformed into tiny mice. Written for Readasaur.
1. Chapter 1

The Castle Crawlers

* * *

Chapter 1

* * *

It was a warm, clear night, and all the balliums of Castle Tears were silent. Those who slept did so peacefully, and even the guards manning the walk-walks were sedate and still. The city-state of Tears was broaching its tenth full year of peace and prosperity, free from strife and siege, and even the most alert among its populace was finally settling into a sense of serenity and the belief that peace was here to stay.

The castle rested soundly, innocent of the knowledge that it was experiencing what would be its last moments of normalcy.

Two individuals in the castle were still alert. In the bailey, within the keep, they sat at a small, circular stone table, elbows resting on the top. Both wore robes, but only one wore the royal colors of white and lavender; the other wore plain brown ones made of flax. Their mood was calm but tense, the way a diver might feel when contemplating whether to really plunge down a waterfall.

The figure in brown shifted, conveying patience of mind but restlessness of spirit. Under its hood, large nocturnal eyes peered resolutely out from above a short, whiskered muzzle. It was a face covered in fur and spots.

"Are you certain you want to do this?" he asked the other figure – the second time in ten minutes of otherwise silence.

The man he sat across from could have passed as young were it not for the deceptively deep worry lines on his forehead and around his eyes. His shoulder-length blonde hair suited his pale skin but clashed with the gnarled hands and wrists protruding from his white sleeves. His supported his head and his blue eyes stared at small contraption of wood and wire set on the tabletop between his comrade and him: a loaded mousetrap.

"There would be no going back, would there?" he posed, and - despite knowing that his comrade knew the answer and was merely buying time - the cat man shook his head.

"We would not be able to turn back the hands of time to undo this" he said calmly, before adding "If you are still uncertain, we can postpone…"

He trailed off when the man shook his head, his expression pained.

"It's too important" he said, speaking as much to himself as to his friend. "The preparations… The time. We will never have another opportunity like this."

"I would not rush you…" the cat man said. "…but it is almost midnight."

He indicated the silver moon overhead with a clawed digit. The blonde man put both hands on his chin and looked so intently at the mousetrap as though he sought to spring it with the power of his gaze.

"They'll hate us, won't they?" he said in a vulnerable tone.

"I daresay you more than me" the feline returned. "But if doing this is still important to you…"

"It's more important than anything" the man with the royal robes said, forcing resolution into his voice and extending an open hand. "I'm ready."

The cat man pulled a wooden flute from his robe and transferred it to the blonde man's hand. The blonde man beheld the utensil intently: and etched into the instrument's surface were the words _Most Royal House of Tears_. Its open tip ended in the beautifully-crafted wooden corolla of a royal bluebell with delicately-curved petals. Slowly, the man lowered the head of the flower carving towards the mousetrap.

The descent tarried: the tip of one of the petals wavered an inch above the catch. Again, the blonde man looked to his partner, and his expression was a combination of agitation and fear. The cat man reached across the table and placed a stout paw on the other's bicep.

"Only you can make this choice" he said, evenly. "Whatever you decide, I will support you, but the choice can only be yours."

The royal-robed man gulped, and nodded. He held out his other hand and his comrade grasped it with his other paw, holding tight and demonstrating the good faith of his promise. The blonde man held his breath, and touched the wooden flower head to the catch.

The bar loosed, the hammer slammed down, and the flower head was severed from the flute with a _CRACK_ that upset the night's stillness and shook an unexpectedly large amount of dust from both the instrument and the trap. Both individuals felt the faintest rush of wind blow outwards across their faces and in all directions of the inner keep. To the blonde man, the noise seemed to echo, and he held his breath until the silence seemed perfect again. He looked to the cat man, nervous relief in his eyes.

"Do you think anyone heard that?" he hopefully asked.

"Do you think it would matter now?" the cat man returned. "And besides, we now have our army."

* * *

One Week Later

* * *

Nestor woke up later than his friends, after the sun had already risen, and did so in a state of discomfort. He never slept well when wearing his brigandine beneath his usual leather armor, but it was his habit to don the majority of his battle dress as soon as his party came within two days' worth of travel of a hostile destination, in case they were ambushed by a welcoming party. Their current destination was not one he would normally need to equip himself for, but as per the latest information his team had received, Castle Tears had been still and inaccessible for days. Nobody knew what to expect, but Nestor prepared himself for the worst.

The warrior rolled onto his side and sat up, groaning at his soreness and alerting his fellows to his consciousness.

"Nestor, old bean!" greeted Samer, lifting the hem of his spangled robe as he climbed across the floor of rocks to what had been designated as the warrior's side of the cave. "Thank my boyishly handsome beard that you're awake! I was beginning to think I had mumbled a spell in my sleep and turned you into a log."

"You codgering old conjurer" Nestor muttered, running his fingers through his curly black hair and trying to master his irritation. "Please tell me you're bringing breakfast."

"Yes, but better than you imagine!" the wizard chirped, and produced a shiny piece of crockery from thin air. "I have finally perfected my greatest spell: tea from nothing! Witness, now…!"

He held his cup out at arm's length, moved the fingers of his other hand dramatically, and a stream of steaming fluid poured from a point in midair as though being coaxed from an invisible teapot. The wizard had to lunge to catch the tea; it had not poured from the area he had intended. Nestor watched Samer dance in place at delight of his own work; the wizard had not lost his enthusiasm for magic in over a hundred years of possessing it.

"Yeah, I'm sorry for not keeping up with your accomplishments, Samy" Nestor said. "But didn't you already figure this out a few days ago?"

"The tea wasn't hot, then" the older man corrected, blowing on his steaming cup. "But now, wherever we are, everyone in this party can meet the day with a cup of hot, aromatic, delicious… _Bleagh!_ Swill!"

The wizard had tasted the tea and made a face as though he had sipped from a trough. Pursing his lips in revulsion, he held out the cup to the warrior.

"Black tea. I hate black tea. You can have it. It will wake you up faster than a ferret in your trousers."

His impatience assuaged by buffoonery, Nestor laughed at his animated friend and made as though to ward off the tea. The wizard comically persisted, carefree, until the liquid began to slop out of the cup.

"Careful!" Nestor warned. "I don't want that on me. Knowing you, that's bilge water."

"You insult the land's greatest magical cuisinier!" Samer said, trying to sound outraged but was betrayed by his giggles. "Am I not the only one you know who can make a chicken dinner from rocks?"

"Maybe rocks from a chicken dinner" Nestor returned, making Samer crow with appreciative laughter.

The wizard opened his mouth to retort, and for a moment, Nestor was convinced that his comrade was demonstrating the most amazing open-mouthed ventriloquism and voice impersonation he had ever heard. However, the voice that spoke did not in fact come from him, but from the individual who had approached him from behind.

"Peace, you two - peace! Won't you be still?"

From behind the tall wizard appeared a diminutive man wearing chain mail beneath his open shirt and a wheel-shaped pendant around his neck. He delicately brandished a short flail at the two of them, which Samer received with wide-eyed delight, as though the cleric were a long-lost brother who had shown himself again after years.

"Honesty! You're here to join us for tiffin, aren't you?" he said, and held out the half-empty cup to him. "Pray for my tea? It's beyond all mortal help."

"Really, Samer" Honesty admonished, his voice dreamy even as he tried to be stern. "This is no time for effervesce."

"You didn't sleep well, either, did you?" Nestor posed, finally rising up. "Either that or you're too into your prayers again to put on your shoes, again."

The cleric looked down at his bare feet. It was true; he had been very much caught up in the Pantheon as he had gotten dressed.

"So it seems" he affirmed. "But truly, that's beside the point. I don't think you realize how inconsiderate we're being to poor Dion."

The mood collectively sank, and everyone turned their heads towards the mouth of the shallow cave, where Dion's shadow lay motionless on the ground in the morning light.

"Oh dear" Samer said, his voice almost unrecognizably restrained. "He didn't sleep at all again, did he?"

"No, he didn't" Honestly replied sadly. "And he'll take no breakfast. He's been waiting for hours for us to get up, and I'm surprised that he didn't start out ahead of us before dawn."

With all the ferocity of a tired kitten, the cleric rounded on his comrades again.

"Wouldn't you feel terrible if it was _your_ home that this had happened to?"

"Steady now" Nestor objected. "Forgot that Castle Tears _is_ our home, too?"

"You know what I mean" said Honesty. "His father's there. They don't go a week without exchanging letters, and now there's been nothing from the castle for almost fourteen days. And everyone along the way has said the castle's completely shut down…"

"There, there, my dear sky pilot" Samer said, patting the cleric. "We're all deeply concerned about our liege, too…not to mention our rogue."

"I know you are, but I ask you to show it" Honesty insisted. "Pick up your gear and let's be off."

He turned and trudged off towards the cave entrance, shouldering his flail, and scooping up his sandals as he walked.

"But breakfast-!" Samer cried.

"Eat it in good health, but on the hoof" advised the cleric.

The warrior and the wizard exchanged glances and gathered up their effects. Samer had the bigger task, having strewn the contents of his pack about his sleeping area for the purpose of late-night experiments, but he gathered it up with another movement of his fingers that sent the various books, goatskin potion bottles, gems and twigs to settle neatly into his over-the-shoulder bag. He picked up his shepherd's crook topped with a crystal ball just as Nestor – having secured his chain lock – gripped his shillelagh, and the two walked into the morning brightness to join their fellows.

Now wearing his shoes, Honesty was attempting to soothe Dion, who appeared as preoccupied and despondent as he had for the last day. Short and tanned, the rogue appeared shielded from the brightening rays by something other than his hood. He stared into the south and appeared to take no notice of his company. In his hand, he ritualistically turned and turned a petrified crystal he had won as a gift for his father.

This was a drastic departure from his usual temperament: the prince had always been a little different from others when it came to communicating with his fellows, but he could usually be counted on to display his royal charm. His current state was fairly alien. An unspoken fear among his teammates was that if they did not reach the castle soon, he would shut down to them entirely.

"Good morrow, matey!" Samer attempted, but quieted at the sour look that dripped across Dion's face.

As Honesty shook his head in disbelief at the wizard's tactlessness, Nestor stepped beside Dion and made a more reserved attempt of communication.

"I'm sorry we overslept. If you want, we can run all day until we get there. We don't even need to stop for meals."

Samer silently balked at this prospect and even Honesty raised his bushy eyebrows, but it had the effect of draining the disdain from Dion's face. He nodded, stored the crystal in a pocket, and was the first to begin sliding down the rock wall onto the rolling hills below.

"Perhaps I can say a spell to make the ground a little flatter, to better carry out our warrior's promise" Samer commented sarcastically.

"Really, Nestor" Honesty added, loosening his collar as he looked apprehensively at the hilly horizon. "I was in favor of an early start and a day of traveling, but no meals? We'll never stop him from running all day, now."

Shrugging and smiling weakly, the warrior was second to begin down the wall.

"He'd do the same for us" he reasoned. "…But yeah, someone stop me from talking, next time."

Honestly sighed and made to follow.

"He's right" he admitted, and looked skyward. "I'll say a prayer for all of our shoes to hold out."

"Pray for our soles" Samer advised, and giggled all the way down the wall, his heels leaving a track of burning embers as he went.

* * *

They had traveled this part of the countryside many times before, but never at this speed. Dion was as good as Nestor's word, and kept a remarkable pace for the duration of the sprint. His party, though they frequently fell behind each other at distances of up to half-a-league, dutifully kept their legs working without complaint. They happened to be in close proximity when they passed the stream on whose shore grew delicious blackberries, and Nestor was proud to note that none of his fellows so much as groaned as they fled on by. Truly, they were a tight group that would have run even greater distances over rougher terrain if it were a personal matter for any of their number. Blood was thicker than water, but sweat was just as salty.

Nevertheless, relief was palpable as the fellowship climbed out of Viridian Valley with evening approaching and finally sighted Castle Tears. The spired acropolis sat on the highest hill, facing the empty Valley. Its eight outer walls were a dignified gray, though no one would notice this because almost every visible outer surface that was not shingled was overgrown with creepers - thereby almost allowing the structure to blend in with the landscape. It was usually a heartening sight, but now, it swiftly transformed the party's relief into dread: the royal flag was no longer flying.

"Ah-!" Honesty gasped, doubling over with his hands on his knees. "So… Now let's just- Oh Dion, do wait."

The rogue had started forward with every intention of continuing up to the gate. The cleric stopped him by placing a hand on his shoulder, and Dion looked around with an irritated expression.

"I know" Honesty implored. "But we have to survey. There may be traps."

"There are no traps!" Dion snapped, speaking for the first time in almost two days and clearly offended by the suggestion that he could not spot a snare from a mile away.

"Not all traps are visible" Nestor reminded him, panting and putting one of his own hands on Dion's other shoulder. "We go charging in there like a troop of pigs, we might not be able to help anybody. Give us just a minute and let Samer do his thing. Sam- Oh, Samer."

The wizard was no longer standing behind them, but lying flat on his back with the tip of his hat pointing back down into the valley. He was heaving for breath. Honesty and Nestor dropped to his side, making sure their centennial friend was only exhausted. Dion regarded the scene with a combination of impatience and concern, repeatedly shifting his weight from one foot to the other as his fellows doused the wizard with water from a skin bottle. Samer sputtered ad thrashed.

" _Gah_ -! Those nonverbal spells always go wrong" he cried. "I sought to feel refreshed, and get doused…and I'm a _fire_ wizard, consarnit!"

"Just lie there for a moment" Honesty said, dabbing his comrade's wet forehead with his stole. "You're not the youngest anymore. I'll lay some healing on you."

Dion made an uncomfortable sound as Honesty placed his hands on Samer's sopping face and began to mutter. Coexisting with friends for months at a time had been the best therapy in self-control that he could have received, but balancing the health of Samer with the unknown fate of his home and family was proving stressful. He began plucking compulsively at his hair.

"No, no – I'm quite fine, thank you" Samer declared, waving his hands. "I'll be right up!... If our resident giant-wrestler would be so kind."

Nestor could have lifted the wizard to his feet with one hand, but used both to tip him up stiffly, like a vampire rising from a coffin. Samer required continued physical support as he smiled hearteningly at Dion and then fished through his pack, coming out with a device that looked like a kaleidoscope. As Nestor held him under the arms, Samer set the device against his eye and angled the opposite end at the castle. The apparatus glowed slightly as the wizard peered through it.

"Oh, frog's breath" he grumbled, making his fellows perk in anticipation of an explanation. "Nothing! No active magic up there that I can see. No abjurations, no enchantments, no conjurations – not even any illusions! Between here and the castle walls, there's nothing. I don't even see anybody on the towers. No fun at all."

"So we're dealing with something I can hit" Nestor commented, a trace of excitement in his voice.

"Not necessarily" Honesty corrected, rubbing his amulet and glancing skyward. "If someone's placed the castle under divine protection…"

"We'll watch for storm clouds and thunderbolts" Nestor conceded, and slung Samer around to carry him on his back. "Everyone needs to watch for anything suspicious. That includes you, wizard."

"It does not get any more suspicious than this dandruff, back here" Samer quipped weakly.

* * *

The hike up to the gate took the better part of an hour, given the group's cautious advance. Ever on the lookout for projectile-bearing enemies to suddenly appear atop the castle walls or come flooding out of the gate, their vigilance rendered the questing party even more exhausted by the time they reached the castle. Honesty kept glancing up for hostility from an enemy deity (causing him to slow down so that Dion bumped into him several times), but the sky remained as clear as ever despite coming nightfall. Dion's assessment of the terrain proved accurate, and the troop reached the top of the hill without hindrance.

There were signs of people having attempted to gain entry. The giant bronze bell mounted to the left of the gate was hanging lopsidedly for having been rung to death, and the wooden gate bore gouges from having been jabbed in frustration by spears. Three separate, covert glances were leveled at Dion, who regarded the damage stoically. With the tiniest of frowns on his face, he took a necklace from around his neck and touched the flower-shaped emblem against the hidden inlet between the rocks. He pressed, turned, and the sound of deeply-embedded wooden clockwork stirring to life preceded the heavy _SHOOMP_ that announced the unbarring of the gate.

Knowing that the ride was over, Samer slid off of the warrior's back.

Grasping his shillelagh at the handle while his friends likewise armed themselves, Nestor – the only one among them strong enough to push open the gate by himself – led the way inside, looking and turning all about as he moved forward. Were this a regular homecoming, handy servants would be flocking them now before the inner curtain, eager to take Dion's load off him and generously taking the packs from the rest of the party as well. Then they would enter into public square where the prince and his cohorts were recognized by all. As they entered it now, desolate silence was the only thing to greet them. The cobbled streets were clean and the many quaint wooden homes built on top of each other still retained vestiges of charm, but merely in the way that an expensive robe shows its luster even on a skeleton. Doors and shutters stood alternatively open and not a single face looked out at them. Even the animals – chickens and livestock, dogs and cats – appeared to have vanished.

As the party stalked towards the keep like infiltrators, they passed the great commemorative statues of the goddess Shelyn that Honesty's forefather – Morality – had erected. In her stone form, Shelyn wept for all the suffering the kingdom endured, her tears supplied by the hot spring beneath the hill whose water was channeled upwards by magic for the aesthetic purpose. Now, however, Shelyn's unmoving faces were dry; water was no longer reaching her statues.

Samer took his crook and crystal ball into one hand so he could reproduce the kaleidoscope with the other. He peered around again.

"Still no trace of magic" he reported. "Someone's even taken my flourishing charm off the flowers."

He was right: the bluebells that were planted along the avenue leading to the keep and which flourished unusually well in this climate thanks to the wizard's magic had wilted, their fallen petals creating rough outlines up the street.

Nobody needed to remark on how confounding the entire situation was. It was possible for a powerful sorcerer to spirit away an entire population, but not without leaving a lasting signature that Samer's Revealer would let him see. There was always the possibility that everyone in town had been carried off by raiders (or worse, eaten by enormous beasts), but there were absolutely no signs of the struggle that the hardy folk of Castle Tears would have almost certainly put up. Honesty was certain that he would have detected Rapture if one had occurred. The one remaining simple explanation for the desertion was that everyone had retreated into the keep, but even if there had been a siege, no one would have taken down the flag. Additionally, nobody could imagine why all magic in the castle had been lifted.

The square and the avenue were not nearly as essential to his comfort level as the keep and his own room were, but these places had nevertheless been a source of soothing familiarity for Dion. The rogue prince tended to regard things and people in different ways than most others, and now that he beheld his castle-to-be devoid, he did not feel sadness or concern about the people, but rather the unwelcome prodding of anxiety. If he were not busy looking for traps, he would have preferred to just stare at Honesty's back to deflect what worried him. With effort, he was able to channel his thoughts into a need to find out what happened and restore things to how they ought to be. Whoever was responsible for this was to blame for how he felt. If his troop and he could find the scoundrel and neutralize him, then everything would fall back into place; he was sure of it.

Before he knew it, the castle's massive keep was before them. Its walls were still draped with the royal banners, despite the absence of the flag overhead. Every window was protected by glass panes, all of them unbroken. Nevertheless, here was the first overt sign that something adverse had taken place: the drawbridge was crushed, lying in two pieces in the scalding moat below – the only source of water harnessed from the subterranean springs that did not require magic to operate.

The distance between the keep's open entrance and the end of the square grounds was not terribly far: perhaps twelve feet, which was easy enough for all of them to clear in a jump – even Samer could jump that far without the aid of magic. Again, the group was befuddled: it would have made for an illogical defensive move to destroy the drawbridge, and there were no signs of offense leveled against the keep. If invaders had succeeded in crushing the drawbridge, why were there no signs of a makeshift bridge lain down?

"How odd" Honesty declared, his eyes tracing the span of the moat.

"Weird" Nestor stated, peering into the darkened interior of the keep.

"What a great mystery!" Samer chirped, and magicked a tiny, fiery canary from thin air. "Go, my tweeter!"

The bird flew through the gaping entrance, becoming a tiny, glowing light in the darkness. Its cheeping echoed outward to the party, and eventually, it flew back out and singed Samer's robe as it perched on his shoulder to peep at him.

"My friend says everything looks normal in there" he translated. "The great curtains have been drawn and it's dark, but as far she can see, everything's in order. Oh, and she says your hair could use a trim, Nestor."

"What do you mean, 'as far as she can see?'" the warrior posed, ignoring the remark. "Is anybody in there?"

"No!" the wizard assured him as the bird flew off anew, into the sky. "Nobody's in there. And she could not get beyond the entry hall; the doors are closed."

"Make a bigger bird that can open doors" Nestor suggested automatically.

"Maybe after the old man catches fifty winks" the wizard replied, nose in the air. "I hate to announce my limitations, but if I try anything larger than a chicken right now, it's bound to come out as a warrior-eating dragon."

"Would it be able to open doors?" Honesty asked hopefully, and Nestor nudged him.

Deliberation followed as to how to best approach. Dion regarded it as a waste of time: he knew that there was only one way in or out of the keep, and after assuring his cohorts that there almost certainly were no traps, nets, or cages awaiting them immediately on the other side of the moat, the rogue turned inward to occupy himself while the others conferred. He would have hopped right over the moat in an instant, but such solitary behavior tended to get negative reactions out of his teammates. They really slowed him down sometimes, he thought, and in times like this, it was terrifically frustrating. His hand reached for his hair, but he caught himself in mid-pluck. To compensate, he took his rapier from its loop and began turning it over repeatedly with one hand; the blade caught the light from the sun each time, and the momentary glare was relaxing.

"Dion? Dion?.."

He heard his name but it did not occur to him to respond yet. When Nestor laid a hand on his shoulder, he finally looked up.

"Dion, we've decided to take the jump" the warrior said. "…Wanna wait a bit?"

"Let him come when he's good and ready" Honesty said. "There's nothing out here. We'll just hop in and get a better look at the hall."

Nestor appeared apprehensive at the idea of splitting up at all in such a situation, but nevertheless turned to join the other two, showing Dion a small smile before he looked away. He tripped on his way over to the wizard and the warrior.

"Damn shoes…" he grunted. "They're coming apart."

"Care to walk on air for the rest of the day?" Samer offered helpfully.

"Save it, Sir Can't-Make-A-Big-Bird" Nestor rebuked. "If anything's roughing around in there, I might need some magic fire and I don't want you to faint on me."

"If I faint, you and dear Honesty can practice your refreshing spell again" Samer returned with a raised eyebrow. "Let's get on with it! I'd love to set something ablaze."

"Come, then. On three?" Honesty suggested.

Still slightly detached, Dion heard his friends count upwards, then the sound of their collective running start and leap. As they landed, the prince realized that it was counterproductive to make his team wait for him, and turned to face his fellows.

He looked towards the keep's entrance, across the moat…and found nothing there.

Rather, he found no one there. What he did find was a pile of clothes lying on the ground, just over the first few stones of the threshold. Honesty's mace and Samer's crook fell on top of them with a _WHUMP_ , joining Nestor's shillelagh and chain lock. The warrior, wizard, and cleric themselves were nowhere to be seen.

Dion stood still, staring at where he would have expected to find his fellows. His eyes eventually moved about, scanning the area for some other area they might have landed or hid in. It was not improbable that Samer had executed another magic trick that separated the three of them from their clothes and left them invisible. Even if that was not the case, they still had to be somewhere.

As he stood there, a deep and unpleasant vibration began within him, and an off feeling of unrightness began to take hold. If he were to panic now, it would not be out of fear, but out of the sheer unfamiliarity and confusion of his situation.

"Hey!" he called out. " _Hey!_ Nestor! Honesty! Hey, Samer!..."

Only silence came back. It hit him that something was indeed very wrong, and it was not simply how he felt about the situation. Something had happened in the second between when they had landed and when he had turned around. It had been a full twenty seconds since then, and if neither Nestor nor Honesty had gotten Samer to stop playing a joke, then clearly no joke was being played. Something had happened _to_ them.

His adrenaline building, Dion about to take a running start of his own when he finally heard it: the faintest squeak of Nestor's voice – so quiet, it sounded like it was coming from a hundred yards away.

"Dion!... Dion!..."

Nestor was calling for him. Nestor did not call for help unless he really needed it. Dion took off, and leapt from the edge of the moat, kicking his feet up and soaring towards the keep's entrance like a hooded projectile.

" _No! Stopstopstop!_ "

This time it was a group of voices, and Dion distinguished all three of his comrades in the clamor. He distinguished their tone over the meaning of their words, and – knowing that when this laid-back bunch yelled so, it had to be for something important – did all he could to heed. If he could have, he would have stopped in midair like one of Samer's experiments with gravity. In lieu of that, he achieved an almost dead stop upon landing on the threshold. His arms windmilled for a moment as he regain his balance, his feet cemented to the first foundational block of the keep.

Keeping his balance was no problem for Dion, but his friends were still invisible to him. From his perch, he could see further down the hallway – right into the shadowy confines of the entrance hall – but not to where he was certain the rest of his party must have yelled at him from.

"What?" he called into the darkness.

"Oh, thank Pelor - he's fine" came Honesty's voice…from the vicinity of Dion's feet.

The prince looked down into the lumpy pile of clothes and weapons lying on the floor, and his keen eyes promptly distinguished three sets of eyes looking at him – black, shiny eyes peering out from furry, whiskery faces.

"Dion" came Honesty's voice out of the straw-colored mouse's mouth. "Don't move, alright? Everything will be alright; just don't panic."

"I'm not panicking" Dion replied to the rodent.

"You're doing better than me!" Nestor said, from the throat of a brown mouse. "Samer, you flounder! You said there was no magic here!"

The Nestor mouse took hold of the shoulders of a black mouse and began shaking it. The black mouse flailed its little forelegs and squeaked.

"Stop it! Desist! I'm an old man-mouse!"

The Honesty mouse separated the two of them with some difficulty.

"Please" he said. "Everybody try to relax. We need to get our bearings. Clearly, we all jumped into something. Let's see if going back reverses the effect. Let me go, lest all of us return to form at the same time and we fall in the moat."

Dion watched the little rodent scurry over the pile of clothes and join him on the block he was standing. Nothing happened. Honesty circled the prince's boots, climbed over his toes, and hopped up and down as much as his new body would permit. He remained tiny and unchanged.

"All right" he said in his minimized voice, still mellow. "So the easiest possibility wasn't the right one – when is it ever? We just need to think."

"I always think better with tea" Samer commented, and within a second, he had reproduced his tea-pouring trick from the day before on a micro scale without even thinking about it, complete with a tiny cup.

"There!" Nestor said, pointing a tiny, clawed finger. "Your magic still works! Change us back!"

"Nestor…" Samer said, serious for a third time that day (a personal record). "I cannot perform large magic without rest. I could not even create that larger bird you wanted; you think I can manage three people?"

He sipped his tea, and winced at the taste.

"And besides, this wasn't magic. My Revealer is never wrong. I might not be able to alter this with magic."

Groaning, the brown mouse shuffled across the comparatively enormous set of trousers belonging to Honesty. Shortly thereafter, he shuffled back the way he came, and put a paw on Samer's furry shoulder.

"Sorry I shook you, mate" he said.

"Apology accepted" Samer said. "Want some tea?"

"No" Nestor replied, and put both of his paws on his comrade's boxy hips. "But hold onto it for a moment."

Samer was lifted into the air above Nestor's head as though he were made of paper. Unperturbed, the mousey wizard looked down as he took another apprehensive sip of tea.

"You're going to carry me some more? Very charitable of you!"

"Just checking" Nestor replied, and carefully set Samer back down on his little feet. "Hard to judge with you, but I think I'm still mighty."

"Likewise, I still feel the holy presence" Honesty added. "I'll be saying a prayer for us shortly, but it's clear that we retained our talents…not to mention our speech, our thinking capacity…"

He ran his paws over his head, flattening his ears in the process, and perched himself on top of his medallion, which was now large enough for all three mice to sit on if they pleased. Nestor stepped forward, holding out his forelegs.

"Everyone…" he began. "I've used some of that thinking capacity, and I think we've been had. We're mice, and can't turn back. We won't be getting across that moat, and even if we could, it wouldn't change how fuzzy we are. Whoever did this is gonna be the same rat that did this to the castle, and he…she…it wants us to go in deeper. Don't know what else we can do but go on."

"So what are we waiting for?" Samer asked, gripping his tail and waving it like a weapon of war. "I may be a mouse, but in my chest still beats the heart of a senior lion! Let's go find that bad egg and boil it! _In black tea!_ "

"I think we're waiting to decide what to do with Dion" Honesty said.

Again, all three pairs of beady eyes turned upwards at their still-human comrade, who had been observing them calmly.

"I can't make the jump back over" he said, anticipating their thoughts. "I don't even have room to back up."

"And if you take but one step forward…" Honesty said apprehensively.

"You'll be a member of the cat bait brigade!" Samer finished.

As a group, the three mice congregated at the rogue's feet. Dion placed his chin against his sternum to look down at his three transformed partners, and saw that Nestor had placed the paws of his forelegs on his right boot; Honesty had done the same for the left.

"Maybe you should stay" the diminutive cleric said.

"He's right, pal" Nestor added. "No sense in all of us turning vermin."

"Besides, your father will cage us if he found out we let you grow a tail" Samer concluded, waving his own rear appendage again for emphasis.

"Traps" said Dion, automatically.

"Don't worry; we'll be fine" Honesty implored. "Look at how tiny we are; you think we'd overlook any snare?"

"We'll go slowly" Nestor said. "And keep out of sight. And if something should happen, I'm still strong and Honesty's still got his prayers and Samer still has bad jokes."

"I can still deal out plenty of pun-ishment!" Samer heartily agreed.

The mice were met with Dion's dissatisfied frown. His face had become filled with such untouchable resolution that it was clear to Nestor, Samer, and Honesty what he was thinking. They attempted to protest, but the prince spoke over them.

"I decide what happens to me" he stated with clarity that he had been unable to manage for the last two days. "Back up."

Dion raised his foot, and as his friends scurried back a yard, he set it down on the stone before him. The last thing he saw from his human height was Nestor's undeniably irritated expression as he looked back at him over what once was his shoulder.

 _WHUMP_.

* * *

Once the sound of clothes hitting the floor was heard, the three older mice turned back around and hurried to where Dion had stood a second ago. Once they reached the pile of clothes, they burrowed through it, pulling the garments aside as best they could. Finally, Samer made a noise of delight as he peered under the rogue's old vest, and cried "Hooray! It's cute little Dion!"

He held the fabric up so that Dion – naked now but covered in gray fur – could crawl out.

"What's so hooray about it?" Nestor asked, huffing as he waded across the clothes to them. "He shouldn't have moved."

Even with his new face, Dion's frown was unmistakable as he looked up at the warrior mouse.

"I decide what I do with myself" he said. "You can save me from monsters, poisons, and angry gods, but you don't get to decide what I do or when I get to save you back. I put our team together; I'm always going to be with it."

The older mice exchanged glances – silently regarding the unexpected change in their predicament. Slowly, Nestor's look of irritation turned to sheepishness, while Samer looked ironic and Honesty looked pleasantly humbled.

"Ah, well" the cleric conceded. "It was wrong to ask you to wait. We should have known better."

"Yes, Dion's not one to let us hog all the fun!" Samer added.

Nestor shrugged, clearly deciding against wasting any more energy on ill will, and put an arm around the mouse prince.

"We're all still standing as one, then" he declared, and held out his other paw to Samer and Honesty, who stepped in for their closed huddle.

Pleased though he was that his teammates were taking his stride, Dion could only take a few seconds' worth of hugging. He wriggled free of the group embrace, and when his fellows let go of each other as well, they found him lifting up the blade of his sword with both paws.

"Samer, you have to do this" he said. "You can't change us, but you can make the weapons and other things smaller, huh?"


	2. Chapter 2

The Castle Crawlers

* * *

Chapter 2

* * *

It would have been too cumbersome to bring along everything. Samer had magically shrunk all of the possessions they had entered the keep with, but, for instance, their clothes were yet tailored for human forms and did not fit their newly-proportioned bodies. Samer could still have worn his robe, but it was not conducive to running around on all fours. As a result, nimble tailoring was required of Nestor, and while the crude garments he created from parts of their existing clothes provided nowhere near the protection of their armor, they at least served the purposes of giving them places to secure their weapons and of covering their furry bottoms.

The usefulness of their miniaturized weapons was briefly pondered. Nestor swung his chain lock, took note of how flimsy the tiny weapon felt in his tiny paws, and wondered aloud whether it was still capable of inflicting any damage at all to anything larger than a rabbit. Dion advised him to try it out on the nearest wall, and when the warrior succeeded in putting a small but nevertheless vicious hole in the block he aimed at, it was roundly agreed on that Nestor lead the way ahead of everyone else, like he always had. Thus, the party was off, with much of their usual gusto.

…Though without their usual efficiency. Even as children, Nestor and Dion would have been capable of running the volume of the entire castle within a quarter-hour, and Honesty and Samer had not been much slower. Now, the party tore down the entryway and into the receiving hall with the same level of energy as always, but it was clear to all in their group that four mice did not run nearly as fast as four men could. By the time they had crawled by the many chairs that lined the room and reached the heavy wooden door beyond, it was plain that they had exerted the amount of energy for a distance of fifty human-sized steps that they would typically have done for over a league.

There were unexpected benefits of their new state, though. Most noticeably, it bothered none of them that none of the torches hanging in brackets on the wall were lit, because seeing in the near-darkness had become natural. The shadows were still there, but invisible light illuminated the room with surprising detail. Additionally, nobody was tired: while sleep had been the furthest thing from all of their minds, it would become conspicuous throughout the night that none of them wearied as they otherwise would have, despite having run all day and being underfed. Nestor speculated that this was attributable to the nocturnal nature of mice.

Nevertheless, these were relatively minor comforts to the party as they found themselves utterly stymied by a door they had only weeks ago been able to open with ease.

The limitations of their frames were made apparent at once, and they went beyond being unable to grasp the door's comparatively high handle. Waving his comrades out of the way, Nestor confidently grabbed the bottom corner of the door – his little forelegs reaching underneath the crack for a grip – and yanked, but where once he would have been able to pry the barrier out of its frame singlehandedly, he now only came up with two pawfuls of splinters he had ripped out of the door. The rest of the door remained sturdily in place. With mounting frustration, Nestor yanked and ripped for the better part of thirty seconds, which amounted to nothing more than a small pile of wood debris. Standing barely taller than the length of a middle finger, Nestor simply lacked the leverage to do what had once been easy as a human. Noting the warrior's sour expression, Samer patted him appreciatively on the shoulder.

"It was a good try" he assured him. "Us mice do not have it easy."

"Cook keeps all the good sausage in the smokehouse" Nestor pouted. "I'll never be able to get in there, either, if I want a snack."

"I've spent years and years telling you that meat is devils' food" Honesty interjected. "Now that we're potential vittles for other animals, ourselves, maybe you'll listen."

Betterment of their situation would not arrive without considerable brainstorming. The party roundly understood how pathetic it would appear if they were stumped by a mere door. Dion climbed up half the length of the barrier and peered into the keyhole as he clung to the handle, reporting that the door was not locked but that he had no hope of depressing all of the wards. Nestor suggested a spell, but his enthusiasm was not met when he, upon failing to pop the lock from the ground, suggested they burn it down. Honesty sat and prayed for inspiration, but in lieu of receiving it, the best he could suggest was that they attempt climbing out the windows and reentering through another room's window – a poor recommendation, given that none of them would be able to open any of the windows from the outside. In all, the group spent over a quarter-hour helplessly unable to advance further into the keep.

The humble solution presented itself when, in a moment of clarity brought on by disgruntlement, Dion threw himself onto his belly and wriggled under the doorframe. The sight of this caused no shortage of alarm among Nestor and Samer, who presided under the presupposition that they would not be able to squeeze through any space narrower than their own heads and now saw their friend apparently being eaten by the door.

"Stop! I'm fine!" Dion squeaked as the two of them pulled on his tail. "We can fit!"

Honesty was the only one left on the other side of the door not completely chagrined by this; the cleric offered multiple exultations of thanks to the ceiling before Nestor pushed him under the door to follow where Samer had just disappeared (Honesty ended up also being the only one among the mice to need extra pushing to get through, moving Samer to comment on the devilish nature of communion pastries).

On the other side, the party was met by light. The torches of the ground floor had been lit and nicely illuminated the large common room. It was, however, eerie in its emptiness. The chairs were placed neatly along the table's length and the floor was clean beneath a small layer of dust – as though it had been swept a week ago and not been walked on since, even though the torches looked like they had only been lit an hour ago. The room was still, with no sounds of movement or conversation coming from behind the doors that led to the gallery, the office, the lavatory, the common sleep area, and the bailey that connected the keep's foremost tower to the second one.

"Ah-ha!" said Samer into the stillness, peering around the room with his miniaturized Revealer. "Finally, some good old magic's afoot! Those torches aren't burning naturally!"

Eagerly, he passed the Revealer around for the others to look through. Nestor held it up to his beady right eye and saw the orange flames suddenly turn green through the device's lens. He craned his tiny neck, and saw the invisible, spiraling curls rising up from the base of the flames - as though the fire were a form of liquid continually being stirred with a stick.

"Well, that trims the fat" he commented, handing the Revealer to Dion to peek. "Whoever's done this to the castle has some power over magic."

"Or they borrowed it!" Samer added.

"Whoever it is, fluffy wizard…" the warrior said. "…if magic's afoot, it'll probably be you who'll need to pop the perpetrator upside the jaw."

"Only if husky, long-tailed Honesty prays for my poppers" Samer replied.

"…and bless our fluffy wizard's wizened poppers" Honesty mumbled aloud, at the end of yet another skyward prayer.

The sound of Dion impatiently tapping his rapier against the ground drew the attention of his friends.

"It's Hyle" the rogue declared, his tone and face sternly resolute.

His statement was met with surprised stares from his comrades. Even Honesty directed his gaze downward again, bringing himself back to the present in much the same way he had during the last two days.

"… _Our_ Hyle?" Nestor asked.

"Our druid?" Honesty asked, his nose twitching as he clutched his flail. "Say it isn't so…"

"I never liked that tree wizard" Samer declared, thumping the end of his crook on the ground. "Never could get him into a levitation contest."

"Magic" Dion explained, pointing at the torches. "Locked gate. No sign of a fight. Who did this was already inside, and Hyle is the only magic man in here. Has to be him."

"It's a very good bet…" Nestor admitted.

"Better than a bet!" Samer announced, peering at the torches again through his Revealer. "That fire's not just any green, but viridian – clearly elemental magic! Hyle, you skunkweed!"

"Why would Hyle have done this?" posed Honesty, sadly. "He never seemed very happy, but to do something like this…"

"He'll be a lot unhappier once we find him" Nestor grunted, balling up his paw and punching into his palm. "Wait'll I get hold of him…"

"You'll splinter him like you did that door, won't you?" Samer teased.

"If he hurt the King…"

All eyes turned to Dion, who whipped his sword threatening before his face.

"I'm sure the King's all right-" Samer began to say, but Dion waved his rapier impatiently.

"No no no – no reassurances" he insisted. "More running. We're finding Hyle or the King, right now."

He led the way to the bailey door, and the others could only follow their fiery Prince's lead. Samer was first to follow, then Nestor, who had had to double back and grip Honesty by the shoulders to stay with the group ("If I can eat on the hoof, you can pray on the scurry!").

It seemed unlikely that the first tower of the keep – being designated for the vassals – would hold any answers for them. Exploring had become an unaffordable expense for them because of their reduced mobility. Hence, the plan became to cross through the bailey and into the King's personal tower, but the plan was derailed by the realization that they, again, were not about to get past the door in their way. Dion flattened himself on the ground and tried to look underneath the door, only to see that it scraped the floor and that there was no way even he could manage to squeeze underneath.

"Stairs!" he peeped, hopped up, and led the charge to the stairway.

A bridge on the floor above connected the two towers, and the plan became to cross it, but once again, an entirely minor hindrance proved insurmountable to the group. The individual stairs of the staircase now roughly equaled the height of a first-story window. They might yet have proven manageable – Dion certainly made a valiant effort to climb up the first step – but Nestor saw the trepidation on the faces of Samer and Honesty. The cleric had never exceled rock-climbing of any kind, and the wizard appeared beyond able to levitate himself at the moment. Nestor thought back to Samer's broken ribs from five years ago that even the most earnest magic had been unable to completely heal, and knew he could not force him to go through with it – not when there were other means.

"Hey, who's for running up Madeline the Bleak's legs?" he posed, loud enough for Dion to hear.

* * *

Madeline the Bleak was the first monarch of the city-state of Tears and had initiated the building of the castle many generations ago. The tapestry depicting her and her advisors hung in the common room, over the skirt of the stairway's incline, and was one of the castle's oldest heirlooms. Faded but otherwise well-maintained, the stitching depicted Madeline – downcast but resolute – standing in front of the uncompleted castle. Around Madeline stood the various other founders, including Morality. For the most part, they looked a good deal cheerier than their monarch, whose glumness was only matched by that of Timothy, the forefather of Hyle the druid. He was depicted with his pet cat, Henry, draped around his shoulders.

What most viewers saw of the tapestry, however, only amounted to a third of its length. It was so very long that no indoor wall of the castle was tall enough to hold it entirely, and thus, the thing had been spanned down the space between the staircase and the wall, its bottom portion reaching the common area. The space between the walls which it hung down was only as wide as the space between a person's thumb and forefinger, and continued up into the second floor where the staircase ended. It was as convenient of an avenue as the mouse party could have hoped for.

Dion tested the heavy weaving, nodded at his comrades, and led the way upwards, finding perfect holds in the tapestry with his tiny claws.

"Up we go, then" Honesty said, following. "Closer to heaven, and closer to the problem solved, gods willing."

Nestor watched his comrade's wide rear begin to ascend and glanced at Samer, who was already stowing his crook and crystal ball on his back.

"No such thing, chum" the warrior insisted as the wizard made to begin climbing. "We'll need you to give us some light, once we're between the walls. Grab onto me."

"I wouldn't want to be a burden to you" Samer said as he gratefully placed his miniscule forelegs about Nestor's neck and the two of them began following the others. "I remember when I used to carry you when you were a baby, Nestor. You piddled on my crystal, once."

"Sorry" the warrior said, keeping an upward pace with his comrades.

"On second thought, I don't feel so bad about being a burden" Samer added from over his shoulder. "A little faster, if you please."

The climbing was easy, but once they were between the walls, a great dimness engulfed them. Very little light penetrated the space, and it was clear that the brooms used for brushing the tapestry only rose up so far between full cleanings: the dust was exquisitely thick. A finger-snap was heard in the dark and suddenly they had shadowy light, emanating from the floating ember that Samer had conjured.

Even with steady and unhindered climbing, the ascent took over five minutes for the party, who still adjusted to their new bodies. Nestor was counting the number of times he reached upwards for a new grip; he had gotten to 600 reaches when noise from above made both him and Samer look up.

"Whoa, whoa, _wha_ -! Stop!"

It was Dion. The Prince had apparently paused in his ascent, and Honesty – properly absentminded by now – had climbed up beneath him, his head nudging between his friend's legs.

"Oh, I'm sorry" the cleric apologized, awkwardly scaling down a couple of steps. "I should have been more vigilant; I was reciting the Pantheonic Creed to myself."

"Are we stopping?" Samer called upwards. "Good. I could use a break for tea."

"Come here and look" Dion said insistently. "…Go around me, this time."

Honesty and Nestor clambered cautiously to the same elevation as Dion, who was hanging by a single paw and gesturing at the portion of the tapestry before him. Samer's ember illuminated the woven illustration of the castle's first tower: a round, pointed spire encircled by windows. Nestor did not know whether this represented the tower they were in now or the tower they sought to enter.

"Nice needlework" Samer commented, peering over Nestor's shoulder.

"Look!" Dion urged impatiently, tapping on the dark window of the fabric tower.

Instead of a uniform dark color, the weaver had placed a congealment of gray thread in the lower portion of the window.

"Sloppy" Nestor agreed.

Dion tapped the tapestry window again.

"Mouse!" he said.

Samer helpfully brought his ember closer (Nestor had to wave a paw to keep him from burning a hole into the tapestry), and the party members looked intently into the woven threads that Dion had pointed out.

"…He's right" Nestor was first to say. "There is a mouse in the window. I see it."

"How cute of the weavers" Samer commented appreciatively. "No doubt they had good taste."

"It's not cute" Honesty contradicted, thoughtfully. "He's weeping."

Everyone peered at the section some more. In the illustration, a tiny mouse – its shape very obscure unless one looked directly at it – was crouched on the sill of the window. It sat on its hind legs, its body curled over, and held its paws over its eyes. The human figures illustrated below did not acknowledge it, but the mouse representation seemed like it was reacting to the events that played out beneath it.

"Huh" Nestor said, rubbing his furry chin. "Never noticed that before. Even when they took it down for washing."

"I could be humorous and say I thought this was a coincidence" Samer said.

"Only the Pantheon knows for certain" Honesty declared.

The rogue stared at the weeping mouse a little longer, deep in thought as he plucked at his fur until Samer helpfully touched his shoulder to have him stop. As though the action had caused him to completely lose interest in the discovery, he continued to climb and his comrades followed – leaving behind the first clue of a greater mystery than the one they sought to solve.

* * *

The mice emerged from the drafty vent at the top of the staircase, in a rafter-supported corridor in front of the mounted swords and shields once carried by the first protectors of Castle Tears. Dion was the first to pull himself onto the ledge and assist his comrades up. Nestor massaged his neck while Samer glanced down at the depth he had just been carried up from.

"Until we are all tall enough to see over a table again, we ought to have someone string up a mouse pail from up here – to carry us up and dispel the need for tapestry-scaling" he suggested.

The mouse-wizard's gaze traveled upwards, beholding the shields, and he uttered an abrupt guffaw that made the others turn and look at him. Chuckling, he pointed at the shields.

"My chums, I see a pattern developing" he giggled. "Say I am not the only one to have never noticed those morose fellows before."

In the center of all the metal shields, imprinted on the emblems none of the adventurers had thought to look at before they were too small not to notice, were obscure carvings of mice. Much like the illustration in the tapestry, these three mice uniformly hid their eyes and appeared to be weeping.

"This is strange enough to steam me" Nestor said, glowering at the shields. "Don't tell me they've always been there."

"We see what we want to see, we neglect what we want to neglect" said Honesty, inconsequentially.

"The King's hearing about this, when we find him" Nestor declared. "Maybe he can guess what this all means."

"If he's been turned into a mouse, too, maybe he's already noticed them, too" Samer said.

All eyes turned to Dion, who returned the gaze and merely shrugged, as if to pragmatically say 'what if so?' He led the way down to the floor, which was made easy by a large, sloping chiffonier standing against the ledge. Honesty was last to land on the ground behind his fellows.

"Whew!" he exclaimed, straightening the sash he wore. "Thank ethereum for such large feet!"

" _Shhh!_ " Dion hissed, waving his hand at the cleric as he looked down the short corridor that ended in a westward turn, his ears upturned.

The mood of the party changed instantly. For an instant, his comrades looked at Dion's back, recognizing the tensed posture and alert body language that was predicting danger. They followed his gaze, hands on their weapons in preparation of the threat that their rogue had perceived.

Second later, they felt footfalls. Close footfalls. Something much larger than them was approaching, about to come out of the door around the corner.

Dion spun around and, with his forelegs outstretched, he urged his friends backwards with the utmost of haste. Together, they disappeared under the chiffonier, where Dion pushed them all the way to the back until they were pressed against the stone at the base of the ledge. Even when they could go no further, the Prince pressed on them as though he hoped they could all sink into the rock to hide.

"No one speaks" he demanded.

The door opened, the stranger entered the corridor, and the door fell closed. The stranger turned the corner and walked into their section of the corridor. Its gait was ungraceful, like a person with no shoes trying to walk fast over an uncomfortable surface. The stranger panted continuously. All of the mice simultaneously became aware of their heightened sense of smell when the scent of the newcomer reached their snouts and chilled them in a deep, instinctual way. Samer tried lean forward to catch a glimpse of the stranger, but Dion forcefully pushed him back and fixed him with a glance of deathly importance. Though Nestor thought that his own ability to judge size by the sound of footfalls was impaired by his rodent state, he guessed that whatever was out there weighed at least ten stone and was approximately the size of a fully-grown man.

The stranger stood in front of the chiffonier, audibly sniffing at something, and the mice saw its feet…or, rather, its hands. Pale human hands were within their line of vision, the tips of the splayed fingers resting inches from the perimeter of their hiding place. A two-legger was walking around on all fours, and none among the mice –their heads filled with thoughts of transformations more terrible than their own – could pinpoint who among their old acquaintances the fingers might belong to, if any of them.

But the face that pressed itself against the narrow opening to suck at the air with wide nostrils was definitely not human. The opening was less than two inches wide, limiting both how much of the creature the mice could see and how close it could get to them with its nose. After a few sniffs, the dark, wet snout that had been pushed towards them went away and was replaced with clawing fingers that scraped the underside of the commode in a futile effort to reach the mice it now clearly knew were there.

In the past, the party had found itself in a similar situation, when they had taken cover in a low cave while being pursued by an angry dragon. Then too the creature's massive claws had scraped the ground and ceiling of their retreat as it tried to reach them. This current experience, however, was the more unnerving for the quartet, for at least they had known what they were dealing with when they dealt with the dragon.

Also, upon removing its claws, the dragon had not attempted to topple their hiding place like this beast now did.

 _BOOM_.

The sound of the chiffonier being lifted an inch before falling back made the entire party quake and struggle for balance.

 _BOOM_.

Again, the chiffonier was raised up, slipped out of the creature's grasp, and fell back down, only for the creature to attempt anew. Nestor remembered seeing the cabinet being brought into the castle decades ago, and with what difficulty four men had carried it up the staircase. Clearly their hiding place was made of a good deal of very heavy wood, but he did not trust it to protect them indefinitely from the considerable strength their determined investigator appeared to possess.

"Dion…" Nestor murmured to the rogue still pinning him back. "If we don't move, I think the four of us will become elevenses."

Unlike the warrior, Samer did not bother asking to be released. Having wanted to meet the beast head-on ever since it had approached, the warlike wizard had no tolerance for standing still as their impromptu hideout was uncovered. Samer felt adrenaline reanimating his tired body as he slipped underneath Dion's foreleg and rushed out towards the open, his tail held as high as his crook and crystal.

"How remarkably like with the dragon, this is" Honesty commented thoughtfully, watching the wizard race towards danger.

His comrades and he initiated pursuit, but they were unable to reach Samer before he had darted out into the open and faced the creature. Seeing how far up he had to raise his gaze confirmed to his comrades that they were dealing with something gigantic.

"Halt! I say, desist!" the wizard squeaked, bouncing off his feet as the chiffonier came down with one final _BOOM_. "You may not know this, but you would have to look under a lot of rocks to come up with the gold that cabinet you so indelicately handle cost. You stop right now, or I will hold up a mirror and give you the fright of your life."

Samer's friends joined him in dangerous solidarity to face down their investigator, realizing upon sight that the predicament having befallen the castle was more extreme than they had anticipated.

The creature stood on two human hands and two human feet, but the rest of its humanoid features were inauspiciously divided between body parts found on no man. The monster's head, shoulders, back, and hips were bushy with white fur. Its elbows were close to its body, and its legs had one more joint than a human would have. Man-like eyes faced out from beneath a nonexistent forehead and above a wide, elongated mouth. The dog-man's wet nose crinkled as he took in the sight of the mice assembling before him, their tiny weapons drawn, and he stopped trying to lift the chiffonier.

"There's a good pup!" Samer chirped. "Now, don't be tiresome and attac- _Ah-ha! He struck first! No limits!_ "

The creature's right arm had shot forth, hand outstretched towards Samer, who promptly went on the counteroffensive and burst into flame. Fire engulfed the mouse and billowed outwards from his form until the flame specter was three times Samer's size. The dog-man instantly withdrew its hand and backed away towards the stairs, whining indignantly.

Behind the wizard, the party was not surprised at what had happened. It was Samer's tactic to feign preoccupation with a speech so as to move an enemy to an anticipated surprise attack, then counter with a spell he had been nurturing. Fire was Samer's specialty, and it was expected that he could perform a feat like this even in his tired state. Samer's affinity for combat fueled him further; the wizard ran towards a fight like he did towards saffron tea.

The firemouse advanced on the creature, holding his crook and crystal ball high. The flames fuming off of him billowed with every beat of his heart, blazing with heat that made his fellows' garments flap and the creature's fur rustle. Samer's fire-encased paw separate his miniaturized orb from the crook and wound back.

"Fall with the flight of the slumber tree!" he cried, and flung the crystal ball at his enemy.

The ball became a projectile, flying faster than a mouse's body could possibly generate, and cracked against the wall as the dog-man leapt down the stairs to avoid being struck. The orb caused a miniature explosion where it had collided and left a great singed spot in its wake as it flew back to its owner, who caught it garishly and pursued the beast.

"Come back!" he demanded. "I have some black tea with your name on it!"

A spoonful of icy dread splashed into Dion's belly as Samer said this; the rogue had a feeling that the creature would comply all too willingly. Samer was too far away and untouchable to urge, but he promptly grabbed Honesty and Nestor by their fur and pulled them out of the way. At the same time, the monster sprang up and into view, over Samer's head. The wizard raised his crook and loosed a spire of flame towards the ceiling that merely caught the end of the creature's tail. It landed on the chiffonier, and as it pressed its back against the wall above the vent, it used its feet to unbalance the cabinet and tip it towards Samer, who stood tiny in its wake.

The breath of his comrades collectively stopped as the immensely heavy piece of furniture fell onto Samer with a bone-jangling crash that immediately extinguished his shield of fire. Nestor and Dion pelted forward, disregarding the dog-man still perched on the ledge, but Honesty – apparently choosing the worst time to enter a trance – stayed where he was.

Samer was pinned down by the chiffonier up to his shoulders, and his eyes were closed. Sweet relief came upon the warrior and rogue upon seeing that their friend still drew breath. They knew, of course, about the last-chance protection spell that Samer had long ago spent weeks casting on all of them and which had now reflexively rendered his body as hard as a diamond, but for those few seconds of uncertainty, they had feared the possibility that their wizard had fouled up that spell like he had the one with the tea.

"Pull him out" Nestor grunted at Dion, widening his stance and gripping the edge of the toppled cabinet. "And-a-one and-a-two…"

The chiffonier rose up only as high as Nestor's midsection. In his old body, the warrior would have been able to flip the cabinet into the air, but now he lacked the leverage to do more than dead-lift the thing. Dion grabbed at Samer's clothing and began to pull, then stopped with his gaze upturned, looking at the dog-man climbing down onto the chiffonier. The beast's eyes were registering its upper hand; it knew the mice were in a compromised state.

The monster snatched at Dion, who jumped backwards with great agility but with little alternative but to leave Samer lying. Nestor would have liked nothing better than to drop the chiffonier and pelt the hand that now reached for him, but he did not know if Samer could still take it. Had his body already returned to its normal state and would now be crushed Nestor set the cabinet back on him? The warrior did not know, but he knew he could not hold the cabinet with one paw while wielding his shillelagh with the other. Dion was scurrying bto his aid, but the chimera's calloused palm was already closing around him…

Then it stopped. Dion stopped running, too, and both the monster and he looked down the hallway, where some six feet away, a thunderclap had sounded (Nestor praised himself for not dropping the chiffonier in surprise). Honesty faced them with his forelegs outstretched, his flail lying at his feet and electricity sparking in a thick arc between his paws. It sputtered at first, then grew brighter and more stable. A second thunderclap issued, as loud in the corridor as though they were all standing atop the tower roof. The mouse cleric's eyes had rolled upwards and into his head as he channeled immense forces through the power of prayer, chanting too quietly for anyone but his gods to hear.

Spooked by the thunder, the dog-man withdrew back onto the ledge, gnashing dripping fangs at the strange power. Honesty did not cease. In a booming voice that clearly belonged more to a deity than to him, Honesty said " _It is not you that I burn, but the malice festering within you_."

A bolt of lightning came down from heaven and passed through stone and mortar to reach Honesty's arc, striking the span of electricity and immediately shooting out over the floor. The dog-man had no opportunity to react before the attack struck him in the neck with a colossal crash and slammed him an inch backwards against the wall. He fell with a _THUMP_ onto the chiffonier and slid onto the floor, where he laid smoking and twitching. The hallway filled with the smell of burnt ozone.

Dion clasped a paw over his right ear, which was ringing abominably. He glanced between a wobbly-looking Honesty and a straining Nestor, and decided to attend to the latter, first. Samer's now-limp body was pulled out from under the chiffonier, inspected, declared fine, and lifted into Nestor's forelegs along with his weapons. The wizard-carrying warrior sprinted as fast as he could to catch up with Dion, who ran to a dopey-looking Honesty.

"That was mighty, mate!" Nestor congratulated, all smiles, and the cleric smiled back - at a spot over the warrior's shoulder.

Dion snapped his clawed fingers in front of the holy mouse's snout, and Honesty looked at him unintelligently.

"He's out of it" Dion concluded, peering into his eyes.

"The almighty spirits – they linger within me" Honesty commented, and required support from the rogue to keep from swaying too much. "I have seen the light, and this time, it was spotted with purple."

"He's probably seeing spots" Nestor said with a sigh, reaffirming his grip on Nestor's body; the wizard's limp head rolled onto his shoulder. "No good, Dion ol' chum. We can make do without one of us, but with two of us beyond helping, I don't favor our chances if another one of…of…"

He indicated the dog-man, who had stopped twitching and was breathing shallowly.

"…whatever one calls that. What is that, a werewolf?"

"What?" Dion asked.

Nestor looked 'round and found the rogue holding his ear again.

"Hurt?" he asked.

"Can't hear" Dion said. "Look at me when you talk; I can tell what by your mouth."

"Bilge" Nestor growled, shaking his head and looking away, but upon noting Dion's irritated gaze, he turned back. "I said 'bilge!' These two are out and you can't hear right – and I think I got a splinter."

A close huddle was formed as Dion – still holding on to Honesty – stepped close to Nestor and inspected his paw while Nestor lounged silently on the crooks of the warrior's forelegs. Stillness settled over the group again like a blanket, and as the adrenaline died down in their bloodstream, Nestor and Dion began reclaiming their at-home feeling, in spite of the presence of the unconscious monster lying nearby. This place that looked so different to them now was still their home, no matter what had happened to it or how many creatures prowled around it.

Nestor looked at Samer, snoozing in his arms, and could not help but feel soft-hearted. All animals looked cute when asleep. He sighed, and flexed his paw when Dion finished extracting the splinter.

"Much obliged" he said. "Monster-bashing is fun, but I wish I were in my personal chamber now with my feet up."

"There's probably a monster in it, now" Dion replied.

"That is what makes a home a home" Honesty declared, and was patted on the back.

"We need to find a place to be quiet until these two are up to it again" Nestor said. "And quickly. With your ear, you probably can't spot traps and know when something's coming as good anymore, eh?"

"I can" Dion insisted, affronted.

As though it had been waiting to prove him wrong, the ground began to rhythmically tremble again with growing intensity. Something was approaching, again. Dion and Nestor looked towards the door at the end of the corridor, chillingly certain that whatever was about to come through it was not going to be any friendlier than the dog-man had been.

"Down the stairs!" Nestor and Dion squeaked in unison.

They did not manage to round the corner. Behind the adventurers, the oak door was smashed off its hinges and flew over their heads. It landed with a crash before them, halting their progress and making them turn around to face what had stopped them.

A bull-man hunkered in the doorway, standing on two human feet and looking at them with its great head turned sideways. Its human eyes were grotesquely situation on either side of its skull, beneath a set of horns so long it made the creature stoop to get through the door. A ring too large for its nose rested on its upper lip. It also was alternatively covered in fur, and had only one hand; its other arm ended in a clumsy hoof.

"Oh, bilge" Nestor groaned, and gave Samer a desperate shake that the wizard did not respond to.

The minotaur directed an agitated bellow at them from a malformed mouth that shook the rafters overhead and filled the corridor with steer breath. It almost certainly was not friendly.

"Oh, _bilge_ " Nestor repeated.

Dion and he were both coming to the same conclusion: it was impossible for all of them to make it to the stairs before the monster took five steps and was upon them. There was no furniture left to hide under, and not only had powerful spells been removed from their repertoire, but also mighty prayers – a reality confirmed by Honesty taking a look at the minotaur and attempting to bow to it. Dion pushed the cleric behind himself and drew his sword while Nestor slowly laid down Samer and pulled out his chain lock.

"I'll smash its feet" he said, nudging Dion to look at him. "When it falls, you get its eyes. Good luck."

"Good aim" Dion wished back, aware of how desperate of a plan this was.

The bull-man stepped forward and reared its head back with a blood-curling roar. Dion and Nestor held their stance in front of their incapacitated friends, ready to dart forward as soon as the beast came closer.

But the minotaur stayed where it was and kept its head raised. It made uncomfortable motions with its neck and flailed its arms angrily, straining to get at the mice while pantomiming restraint by invisible bonds. Dion and Nestor glanced at each other in surprise and looked back at the monster's odd struggle as it snorted at the ceiling and made to turn, giving the impression of being restrained still more firmly.

His natural intuition and years of experience had long since made Dion aware that answers to riddles tended to be obvious, and his eyes traveled up the bull-man's body, and upon observing his horns, the situation became clearer. The monster was indeed restrained by what appeared to be two strands of wire looped around both of its horns. Dion followed the span of the wire upwards, into the rafters…

The mice that perched on the wooden beams were, like his party, clothed in makeshift garments. What looked like a dozen of them were grouped around the wires that held the minotaur, holding and directing them as best as they could with their tiny paws. Another half-dozen or so were running across the beams to directly over the heads of Dion and his friends. Dion nudged Nestor and directed the warrior's gaze upwards in time for him to see two additional wire strands being lowered down to them. One end was plain and thin; the other had a wide, wooden seat fastened at the end.

"Your highness! Adventurers!" one of the mice squeaked from above. "Take a seat! Pull yourselves up!"

Understanding the mechanism at once, Nestor straddled the end of the seat, and after Dion had directed the limp Samer and the goofy Honesty to sit between himself and the warrior, Nestor grabbed at the other wire and pulled. The crude pulley system worked and the party rose off the ground and up through the air – higher than the struggling minotaur's reach.

"We are heaven-bound" Honesty declared cozily. "I wish I had time to wash up before meeting Saranrae…"

By the time they reached the rafters, the ground seemed a league away and the bull-man had torn one of his horns free. By the time he had completely freed himself, the last of the rescuers were disappearing into a sizeable hole in the ceiling, having shepherded the adventurers ahead of them.

* * *

Despite his new ability to see in the dark, there were simply too many mice for Nestor to make out clearly. He did, however, recognize their voices. It seemed as though every mouse who asked him and his comrades whether they were all right and welcomed them back belonged to a known acquaintance – seemingly confirming the speculation that everyone within the castle had been transformed. Nestor felt a blast of relief; the worst of the worse scenarios had not come to pass, and the adventurers were among friends.

The mice entered into a dusty holding that the warrior believed was over the church wing, and someone lit a regular-sized candle that had melted onto the floor. With decent light, the first thing Nestor noticed was another depiction of a weeping mouse: the stone altar of the church was so tall that it rose from the sanctuary into the ceiling, and at its hidden tip was perched yet another mouse, cast in rock, covering its eyes as it presided unseen over the glory beneath it. Ignoring the mystery for now, Nestor looked around and thought he recognized some of his rescuers. Captain Ko and the yeomice smiled at him and his party with their new rodent faces, Deighna and some of her scullions were helpfully taking their possessions off their paws, and Aline the physician was on-paw to take Samer out of Nestor's arms to examine the unconscious mouse.

"This is so wonderful, to find you all here! I had no idea you lot were holding up this well!" he said to the group, already beginning to relax in such safe company. "How did you know where we were? And that we needed saving?"

Before anyone could answer, Dion spoke up. The adventurers had been hurried along in a single file, and Dion brought up the rear of that section. The Prince looked more anxious now than when they had encountered the monsters, and Nestor thought it might have something to do with the crowd; Dion hated being cramped among many people.

"Where is the King?" he asked, his voice shaking slightly. "I want to see the King!"

The mouse behind Dion had led him with his paws on his shoulders, and the rogue shook them off. When they began to rub his arms instead, Dion spun around, and looked into the face of the only mouse with heterochromic eyes – one blue and one brown.

"Welcome home, Prince Dion" the King greeted, smiling warmly. "I regret not managing a less exciting reception."

Before he had finished speaking, Dion had planted himself against his father's body with a dull _whump_ , and clutched the back of the King's makeshift robe as he hugged him. The King looked thoroughly relieved and contented as he squeezed his heir in front of his subjects, who either modestly looked away or actually sighed at the nice sight. Nestor was among the latter, and he relished this return to normalcy and urged the droopy-eyed Honesty to have a seat.

He was stopped, however, by Ewart the apothecary. Despite having been turned into a mouse, Ewart still retained a smell of mugwort about his person.

"I beg your pardon, sires and sirs, but there is no time to rest" he insisted. "The Oracles… They were the ones who knew when you'd arrive. They wish to see all of you at once."

He gulped dramatically.

"They said…that the fate of the kingdom rests on what happens now."

"Thank you, Ewart" said the King, his voice slightly muffled from pressing his snout against his son's scalp. "But the kingdom can wait a moment longer. A father's love for his child cannot."


	3. Chapter 3

The Castle Crawlers

* * *

Chapter 3

* * *

Nestor's makeshift bed consisted of a wool hat, folded three ways. It was quite comfortable, but he could not sleep. He lay quietly with his forelegs behind his head, unable to keep his eyes closed for more than a few seconds. His party had been moved to a cleaner loft above the tower study, where Honesty and Samer now dozed heavily and Nestor stared silently into the darkness; Prince Dion had departed to a private area with the King. The entire abode was as so peaceful that it almost seemed like any normal night at the castle, but the warrior could not feel any less like slumbering. His mind was active with what he had been told a few hours ago.

They had not gone to see the Oracles after all. The three old women – now three ancient mice – had been informed of their rescue but declared it senseless to hold an audience while one of their party was goofy and the other was unconscious. Hence, the wizard and the cleric were immediately bedded down on a leather glove and a millefleurs scarf, but before they settled to rest as well, Nestor and Dion sat audience for Captain Ko and the King (Dion actually sat in the King's lap, clinging to him single-minded possessiveness while his father groomed his fur in a newfound mouse-like manner) and listened to what had happened in their absence.

A week ago, the inhabitants of the keep had awoken in the dead of night to the sounds of screaming and struggling from beyond the moat. They had wanted to investigate, but found themselves unable to easily get out of bed because the blankets – along with the rest of the bedding – had suddenly grown much larger than them. Everyone in the keep had become a mouse. Those who managed to overcome their disorientation and master their new bodies climbed onto the eves of windows, where they watched as large figures carried and dragged the rest of the castle's inhabitants into the keep, where the people immediately underwent the same transformation before being driven further inside.

It quickly became clear that the figures were not invaders but also residents of the castle, and their transformation had likely occurred at the same time as that of those in the keep. The cows in the barns, the horses in the livery, the chickens in the yards, and the cats and dogs in the homes had abruptly become immensely powerful two-leggers, and they had single-mindedly fallen upon their masters. No one was sure why these transformations had occurred outside of the keep while the people were only transformed once they were inside it.

When the mice had seen Hyle – unchanged and carrying his iron baton – enter the common area from the bailey, a surge of hope rose in them. Their wizard was gone, but certainly their unafraid druid could help them resist this assault. Their hearts sank and their stomachs turned to ice when the animal soldiers had cowed to him and he began directing them in greenspeak. He oversaw the corralling of the entire castle and then personally destroyed the keep's drawbridge – ensuring that no one could escape. From then on, the mice had lived in the walls and ceilings, constantly threatened by the chimeras and minotaurs and horsemen, and completely unable to escape and seek help.

At this point in the narration, the expression on Dion's face had grown cold and Nestor's paws had drawn into angry fists. So the double-cross had indeed happened as Dion had predicted, and their friends and family had spent the last quarter-month held prisoner by Hyle and his minions. The thought was enough to make the adventurers' blood boil, but at that time, Deighna the cook had arrived bearing a makeshift tray (it was actually a large, square splinter) carrying cheese and sausage.

"Now don't make it sound so bad, your Highness" she had insisted. "You'll sell all of us short."

The cook reached for what Nestor had thought was a decorative bauble attached to her improvised apron, but turned out to be the head of a long and pointy pin which the mouse held aloft like something she had drawn from a stone.

"I am rather proud of myself and all my stirrers, you know" she declared.

The story became something of a best-case development, then. Upon seeing their druid work not towards furthering this awful scheme, the mice became filled not with dread but with indignant rage. When the creatures noticed the mice on the table of the common area standing on their hind legs and staring at them, they approached menacingly with outstretched hands. The first of the mice to be reached was Hildegard the kitchen maid, who armed herself with a shaker from the tabletop and, upon being lifted up in a horseman's hand, assaulted his eyes with pepper. Her effort triggered a mass militarization of the mice, who had - with uncanny success - achieved mass organization within the walls. Hildegard, who still carried a bag of spice on her person, was instantly promoted to senior maid and honorary guardsmaiden.

The creatures were too numerous and mighty to be engaged in a contest of force, but the mice had nevertheless achieved enough victories against them to merit counting. The Oracles had literally been snatched from the clutches of a cat monster by a similar apparatus as used to rescue the hero party, and - in a feat that would be lauded for as long as the castle-dwellers would live - a counteroffensive was undertaken to battle off the invaders as they sought entry to the King's chambers.

"It was…simply glorious" Captain Ko had to concede. "Don't say so to my swordbearers, but who needs guards when the commoners are so brave."

"Our kingdom is small, but I would not wish to preside over any other people" the King added proudly.

Disappointingly, the King's rescue marked both the last time the mice had laid eyes on Hyle and the last time they had managed to enter the King's tower, the single unlocked entrance to which had subsequently been manned by the creatures. Since then, the mice of the keep had successfully kept themselves supplied and rationed, but had been less successful in making any headway in escaping or making headway against the beasts. It was uncertain what they would have done, had it not been for the Oracles' suggestion to wait for the heroes' return.

Nestor knew that many among the mice wished that the adventurers would see the Oracles right away. Like him, they were wide awake and ready to reclaim their home and original forms. But despite his own indignity after hearing the perpetrator's identity confirmed, he knew that he had to rest for a while. He thought back to Samer's one-mouse charge against the dog-man and thought how hotheadedness would sooner get him into a pitfall than allow him to achieve his goal.

He sighed, rolled onto his side, and thought.

Hyle had been a mainstay of the castle for as long as the warrior could remember; when he had been very young, the druid was already a grown man. It was a rare thing for a single castle to host both a wizard and a druid, but Hyle had a legacy with the royal family. His ancestral roots lay in the kingdom's foundation, the story of which was partially illustrated in the tapestry the mice had climbed. Samer had dedicated himself to the King at a later date, and won the hearts of the tiny city-state with the benign wielding of his mighty powers, but Hyle – despite his melancholy manner and comparatively meek magical abilities – had served the crown as stalwartly as his forebears had and was therefore guaranteed lifetime employment.

Nestor tried to corral all of his memories of the druid and examine them for hints of his treachery to come.

As his comrades had mentioned a little while ago, Hyle had never seemed in the best of spirits and turned down not only Samer's playful jousts, but most offers of companionship. His chambers were always neat and he was peerless at tending to the greenery of the castle, including the gardens of the King's subjects, but he seemed to find no revelry in anything. He did not get along well with animals, save for his feline cohort: a little cat he called Richael. Nestor wondered whether Richael too was now a monster, employed in mouse-chasing to a higher degree than ever before.

He shared the sentiments of Dion and Samer: Hyle deserved to be duly punished for treachery of such a large scale. After all, he and those before him had been sheltered by the castle for decades. True, he had sacrificed his energy to winning the siege wars, but no more so than everyone else and certainly for no less compensation and commendation. His name was inscribed on the golden shield that hung in the King's tower to honor the protectors of the crown. The King could not remember any time when Hyle had even been in a troublesome situation with him or anyone else in the castle. Despite all of this, the druid – in his quiet and private way – had found reason to turn the castle's inhabitants into mice and trap them in the presence of violent animal soldiers.

Nestor tried to weigh the causes. Had Hyle been holding some secret grudge against the castle? – was he possessed? – had his mind become afflicted? What Hyle had done was inexcusable and demanded consequences, but Nestor found himself at least interested in what would drive the solitary druid to turn against everyone he knew and forsake his future and legacy with the castle.

* * *

Through the dimness, the warrior spotted movement. Nestor's eyes peered across Honesty's body and followed the slow rise of Samer's form. The wizard was not only sitting up, but levitating upwards off his bedding. Having witnessed this oddity several times, Nestor counted the moments until the rejuvenated wizard awoke.

"One pretty pony… Two pretty po-"

Samer's eyes flashed open in the darkness, and he fell back onto his glove. Nestor elevated his head on a paw and watched as his comrade thrashed around in the dark. When he had regained himself enough to be still and look around, he caught sight of Nestor, who wiggled the digits of his paw in greeting.

"…Oh" said Samer, and his eyes traveled around the dark space in full. "Oh-!"

He reached out and touched Honesty, who groaned in his sleep and rolled over to curl into a plump little ball of fuzz.

"Oh Nestor… Dear Honesty…" Samer said in sorrowful tones. "I'm so sorry."

"For what?" prompted Nestor.

"For getting us into this" Samer replied. "It's dark and quiet and smells odd. We've been eaten again, haven't we?"

With a sigh, Nestor carefully climbed over the furry bun that was Honesty to be closer to Samer, in case he needed reassurance.

"Not quite" he said, putting his paws on the wizard and urging him to lie down again. "We survived."

"Ah, so I routed the rascal!" the black mouse said with a sudden, happy giggle. "Was I brilliant?"

"You were valiant, selfless, and stupid like only we know you to be" replied his friend as he absentmindedly straightened the older mouse's whiskers. "Really, you old wizard, pick a letter: T, E, A, or M – you can't be all of them at once."

Cowed, Samer folded his paws and received the scolding. However, he could not remain somber for long, at which point the end of the whisker Nestor had been stroking popped into flame just as the warrior drew the tips of his paw over it. Nestor drew his paw back in surprise, and then shook a fitfully giggling Samer by the shoulders.

"Dingbat!" the warrior accused.

"Dingmouse!" the wizard corrected. "Now please, tell me why none of us are digested. I- …Wait. _Where's Dion?_ "

Filling in Samer only took Nestor a fraction of the time it had taken the King and Ko to relate the same tale, in addition to the outcome of the battle. However, around this time, Honesty awoke as well and the story had to be repeated – this time with illustrative aid from Samer, who created tiny ember figures to act out the story on the surface of his palm. As distracting as this was, it was good to see that the wizard had regained full control of his powers.

With his wits about him again, Honesty sat with his thighs drawn up against his tummy and his elbows resting on his knees. He was pleased to learn that everyone in the castle was well, but remained preoccupied with the subject of Hyle.

"Druids cannot manifest such power of their own being" he replied to Nestor's summation. "Methinks our old friend has been tempted. I sense the shadowy right claw of Vecna about him."

"Please! For one, he was no chum of mine, no matter how hard I tried to make him one" Samer objected. "And you always try to turn things religious, Honesty you old bap. What is more likely – that the Master of the Spider Throne has a personal interest in turning us all soft and fluffy, or that old Hyle is commanding borrowed spirits to see us all long-tailed and whiskery? That druid probably got into my tomes…"

"You told him he could!" Nestor pointed out. "Gave him the key to your room while you were away!"

Honesty sighed. "The perils of wanton generosity…"

"I'll remember that, the next time you want sip of wine in the middle of a desert" Samer huffed. "Or a fireplace in the middle of the tundra."

"We can just guess how he is doing it…" Nestor concluded, grudgingly. "…which means we don't know what we'll face when we meet him. Ought to stay loose with our tactics."

"I will pray that poor Hyle develops sleeping sickness" suggested Honesty. "Oh, what will Pelor think of me for that…"

Further brainstorming was interrupted by the appearance of Dion, who entered through the door Nestor had seen him depart with the King several hours ago. He was alone, now. After Samer had started a small height into the air, he scrambled to his hind legs to frantically approach their fourth team member. Honesty and Nestor interpreted this as a good enough reason to get to their footpaws as well, and approached their rogue as he fended off the affections of the wizard.

"No kisses!" Dion insisted fiercely, a paw on Samer's snout as the latter embraced him.

"But Dion, I thought you were done for!" Samer insisted. "I thought I'd never experience your flocculent mien ever again!"

"No kisses" Dion insisted and sought refuge behind Honesty, who smiled complacently as he looked towards the wizard.

"Saint Cuthbert does not approve of that sort of thing, Samer" the cleric imparted.

"I wouldn't kiss him to begin with" said the wizard. "But isn't this wonderful? We're together again!"

"We were hardly apart" Nestor reminded him. "But yeah. Lucky that we all got out of that in the hallway, not any the worse. I think Dion actually looks better now than when we started, don't you?"

He had a point, his partners would agree. The Prince was a changed mouse from when he had entered Castle Tears in a state of tension. Now he stood upright more freely, was looser and lucid, and clearly emanated an aura that was approachable for jests. No one said it, for Dion was hard-pressed to accept mushiness from them even in the best of moods, but it was something of a joy for his cohorts to see what a little quality time with his father had done to improve their rogue. Despite himself, Honesty patted Dion on the shoulder.

"So do all of you" said the rogue and looked away – unsmiling but nevertheless bright-eyed. "Everyone's awake, so we should go see the three seers. But the King wanted you to see something else, first. It's interesting."

* * *

Everyone's weapons were stowed in a corner of the recovery room, but the adventurers left them standing as they filed into a circular passageway that connected to the other "rooms" of the tower ceiling where the mice had established their base of operations. They passed by various spaces that had been set up as kitchens, dressing stations, communal bedrooms, and a room that was completely devoted to fashioning mouse-sized garments from fabrics taken from below. To everyone's delight, the mood was not terribly tense: all except the youngest of pups were veterans of siege warfare, and making the utmost of adverse situations had been elevated to an art form within Castle Tears. Along their procession, the party witnessed mice working with energized determination, relaying stories of heroism from the night of their transformation (Deighna, her pin, and her underlings had already achieved legendary status), and even laughing from the sewing room where tailors tickled each other with the ends of feathers plucked from noble garb.

The King was not technically inside the tower. The mice had lifted a tile out of the roofing to gain access to the rooftop, many dozen feet above the ground. A tiny, sloping platform had been created for a foothold, and the King and Ko stood upon it beneath a starry sky. By the position of the moon, the adventurers guessed that it was midnight.

The King was dressed more plainly than most of their party had ever seen him, but his gait and posture made it clear that it could only be him. The entire party bowed before advancing further.

"I am so glad that everyone is well again" the King said with a modest smile. "I daresay that we as a whole may be in better states than our enemy. That is what I want to show you."

He stood aside and let Dion direct his comrades forward, urging them to look down at the path that led from the moat-severed entrance to the keep back to the castle square. The moon was bright in the sky and the mice's vision was good, and thus they were clearly able to make out a small procession of figures heading away from the keep, towards the town. Two were very large, the third very small. They looked like…

"A horse, a bull, and a dog" Nestor recited.

"And they're pure and pretty again!" Samer added with delight. "Returning to the comfort of their stalls and nooks!"

"Precisely" said the King. "We have seen several of them leaving the keep tonight. Whatever magic kept them in their militarized state appears to be waning from their being, one at a time."

"Then…!" Nestor said, hope rising in his chest like a spring swell, but Captain Ko was already shaking her black-streaked head.

"None among us has turned back yet" she said. "No one among us even feels any different. The magic over us seems to be stronger."

"It's not magic!" Samer insisted, though the disappointment of not having so easy a solution to their problem was written deep in his face as well.

"We must regard this as a positive development" the King moderated. "We are still mice, but Hyle's force has been reduced. Our moment to strike is at hand. Tonight, it is our time to set things right again."

The heads of his company collectively turned towards the King, their furry brows raised and their dark eyes shining with surprise. Even Dion gave every impression of this being an unexpected statement.

"Tonight, your majesty?" repeated Honesty, momentarily grounded from his usual dreamy state.

Nestor had not planned to passively remain a mouse for very long, but given their resources and the apparent strength of their enemy, he had assumed that he would spend at least a full day with whiskers longer than his ears. However, in his usual serene state, the King nodded and turned to his son.

"Prince Dion, while you roused your comrades, I visited the Oracles again. They knew that all necessary parties were awake and bid that you assemble before them soon. They predict that tonight and only tonight will we be able to topple Hyle."

Prolonged expressions of surprise met the King, and every one of the adventurers reflected very gratefully on their few hours of rest. Ko was the first to move, and she walked carefully across the platform to revive Nestor by punching him in the shoulder. The warrior looked 'round, frowning at his former superior, who smirked at him.

"C'mon then, warrior" she challenged. "If it was me they wanted, I would already have had my chat and be on my way to tying the traitor's ears together. I trained you better than to stand there like a goldfish with legs, so set an example and hop to it!"

* * *

The only source of light in the room occupied by the Oracles was a solitary lightning bug that alternatively crawled and rested on the ceiling. Despite its movement, its greenish-yellow glow seemed consistently fixed on the three mice seated upon a couche constructed specifically for their use. All three of them were clad in surprisingly nice clothing: their headdresses were clearly bonnets, and they wore dresses over the knees of their hind legs. A makeshift table bearing food stood close by. Were they still human, they would have been passing a water pipe between them, but in its absence, they were slowly working their way through the tobacco the mice had been able to recover by way of a long reed. The entire room smelled sweet and smoky.

Panya – still the tallest and thinnest of the trio, even in her current form – beckoned the four heroes forward as soon as they had closed the door behind them.

"They're witches but won't admit it" Samer informed his fellows in a whisper. "How else could they know we had arrived?"

"Even someone who can't see can hear you giggling down the hallway" Nestor replied. "Now stop goofing."

The group stepped into the thick cloud of smoke that enveloped the seated mice. They themselves had been provided no chairs to sit on, and thus stood as a wall across from the three blind Oracles. Kameke – the shortest and stoutest - held out the reed to them.

"Anyone?" she offered in a squeak. "This is a particularly refined blend."

"Thank you!" said Samer, reaching for the smoking stick. "This is the kind that makes you feel particularly happy to be alive, isn't it? I'd love… Oh."

The wizard caught the disapproving gaze of his compatriots, frowned in disappointment, and retracted his hand. He shook his head with an attempt at dignity.

"Oh well" said Kameke. "We had hoped this would be a beneficent means of keeping our wizard's chatter to a minimum. We do have a lot to get through, so please spare the unnecessary comments."

Affronted at the insinuation that he talked too much, Samer opened his mouth indignantly, closed it, then crossed his forelegs and proceeded to say very little throughout the course of meeting.

"We should invite some discussion, nevertheless" Panya said, with the air of having remembered the answer to a riddle posed earlier in the day. "Inevitably, there will be questions…"

Seizing the opportunity, Dion spoke up with what he thought should be the obvious inquiry.

"Why didn't you warn us that this was going to happen?"

The Oracles took a moment to reply. Their composure remained static, but it was clear that the Prince's piercing question had not been without sting. The aura in the room shifted uncomfortably

"None of us knew, my Prince" Panya eventually replied. "If we had known, we would have rung the bell."

"How could you not know?" Nestor asked..

He looked to each of the old mice in sequence – from Panya to Kameke to Kesi - and addressed each in turn.

"How could you not have seen what his intentions were? Or what he planned alone in his room? Or that he would turn every one of us into rodents?"

The reed stopped being passed around; it rested in Kesi's paw, burning away and creating a cloud above the couch that appeared to shine green with the insect's glow. As the silence grew, Nestor grew irritated. It was not in his nature to be belligerent towards elders - far less towards people who could not see - but he agreed with Dion's sanction that oracles were not of much use if they could not foresee a monumental event such as what had befallen them.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but stopped short upon hearing the surprised gasps of his fellows. He followed their gaze upwards and started, too. Hyle's face, detailed in the smoky cloud cast from the reed, peered down at them with a somber expression.

"We do not ask anyone to take from us the responsibility of our own folly" Panya said, quietly. "This was our sole task – the one means by which three withered old women with no sight could serve the crown – and we failed. Our fiasco can never be undone."

"But before we are cast out for being weak and fallible…" added Kameke. "…we ask that we may prove the worth of our talents to the castle anew. We sit here in great comfort, but we sit ready to serve."

"To serve the only ones who can lead the kingdom out of peril" Kesi rounded. "You may be certain that what will come to pass tonight will determine the fate of the castle. Do not receive this as an affront, but if you leave here without heeding our words, it will be all the more difficult for you to ensure that the future settle in our favor. Will you listen?"

There was no question about that. Samer – still noticeably grouchy but nevertheless intrigued by the promise of a good story – wordlessly conjured chairs and the adventurers sat before the seers. Above them, Hyle's face was washed away in more smoke.

"The intentions of the traitor Hyle were never clear" began Panya. "When we pledged ourselves to the King, he was already with the castle. He had already been here before the King was born. He was, however, a blank slate."

"Intention can be read for the past and present without the aid of passion, but impassiveness makes for an unreadable future. Looking back, we realized Hyle had allowed the whims of others to shape his future – always doing what he was told to do, and never holding ambition of his own. We believe that he intentionally made the future not be his own for the sake of being unpredictable to seers like us."

"And yet here he is, with an obvious plan of his own in a state of near-fulfillment" Kameke said. "How is this possible, you wonder?"

"By forming his plan very long ago" Panya went on. "He calculated the events of this past week further back in the past than I can see, and imbued his plan into an impartial timekeeper that I cannot read – for example, a very long-lived plant. Something with no mind of its own, made to hide one very dark ambition."

Dion interrupted: "How far into the past can you see?"

"Two hundred years" Panya said, with a hint of pride in her voice.

"Wait" interjected Nestor. "You can see two centennials into the past, and you didn't see Hyle's plan being formed?"

"Yes" claimed Panya. "Hyle formed and hid his plan over two hundred years ago. He is more than two hundred years old."

For the second time since they had rested, the adventurers were dumbstruck by an unexpected piece of information. Clearly sensing their disbelief, Panya nodded and took a draft from the reed. She handed it to Kameke.

"Hyle has no lineage within these walls" the short mouse declared. "That much is clear, now that he has shown his true face. Hyle has spent the last six generations telling each subsequent king that his father served the past ruler. That was a lie. No matter what name he took, there was only ever one man."

"Is he even a druid?" Dion put forth.

The Oracles turned to each other, their mouths pursed quizzically. The trio was clearly in tentative disagreement, regarding the answer.

"He possesses green magic, for certain" Kesi said.

"But that can be improvised by a powerful wizard" Panya reminded them.

"Whatever he is, he is not a _practicing_ druid" Kameke declared. "No true greenman would prolong his turn upon the wheel of life for so long. And most importantly, this is not green magic that binds us. It is not magic of any kind."

Samer made an irritated expression as he poured himself some tea; this was old news, after all.

Above the Oracles, there appeared in the smoke the imprint of the weeping mouse the adventurers had noticed in two places throughout the keep. The image became animated, and the green-illuminated rodent shook with unheard sobs as it hid its eyes.

"There!" Nestor said, pointing. "What is that? It's all around the tower, but I've never noticed it before. What's it mean?"

"What's what?" asked Kesi. "Is it the smoke again? Truly, we can't see what puffs up in there any more than we can see anything. It's not an intentional apparition."

"The crying mice!" Nestor specified.

"Oh" said Kameke. "Yes, they've appeared to us, too. We don't believe that's Hyle's work. Though he may have had something to do with it."

"When powerful ill will against the natural world is planned, the world may seek measures to ensure it is not done" Kesi explained. "When Hyle sealed his ambition away, the world deemed it threatening enough to warn those it would affect most directly. These images were scattered throughout the keep while it was being built, acting as warnings for dark times to come. The weeping mouse is an obvious symbol."

"Rubbish warnings, if nobody can even notice them" commented Dion, clearly disgusted with the ambiguity of the supernatural.

"To the contrary, my Prince" Kameke corrected. "These warnings are most pertinent. That they formed at all alerts us to the magnitude of Hyle's plan. Hyle's design was not merely to topple our King and claim the crown – that sort of thing happens all the time. No, we are mice for a much more ominous reason than that."

"…So what is it?" asked Nestor, following what he thought was a respectable silence.

Kesi's sisters inclined towards her. She took the reed and puffed fiercely, holding up one digit as a request for patience. When she finally exhaled the smoke from between her lips, the rising stream formed itself into a dramatic illustration over their heads: a castle on a hill and the sky above, connected by a vertical bridge.

"He seeks to join the Material Plane and the Outer Planes" she interpreted. "Likely for some form of ascension."

A dull slap was heard following Kesi's prediction and a surprised Honesty rocked forward in his seat. Samer had finally asserted himself, albeit wordlessly, and had clapped him on the back.

"What?" asked Honesty. "What have I done?"

"He thinks he's clever" Nestor said, with a disapproving glance at the wizard. "Not everything to do with the metaphysical is linked to Honesty, Samer."

"So why are we mice?" Dion asked over his comrades, his face mildly contorted with frustration. "Why are we mice if he just wants to go to heaven?"

"We don't know, my Prince" Kameke replied, sadly. "He keeps this information guarded. What we do know is that tonight is when he will act decisively."

"This last week has been secretly marked by many failures for him" Panya elaborated. "It may have been a lucky coincidence for him that you were away when he enacted the mass transformation, but he definitely sought to carry out his plan while you were away. He did not succeed, for our situation has not changed. But his plan is finally drawing to completion. He is neglecting his soldiers and allowing them to turn back into beasts because he is too fixated on his dark work."

"And tonight will be either his moment of failure or triumph" Kesi said. "One week – it is a common time limit for supernatural schemes. One week ago, our world changed, and before the sun rises today, Hyle will have achieved his end or been put to ours. I do not think anyone seriously considers that our lot will improve if the former comes to pass."

"The question is, how he is to be stopped" Kameke put forth. "Simply, you must enter the King's tower, find him in its bowels, and destroy the chalice of his ambition."

In the smoky cloud, there appeared an image of a wand with its end formed into the shape of a royal bluebell.

"Is the smoke doing something again?" asked Panya. "If you're seeing what I think you are, you need to find whatever could have spawned this and break it. Break it good."

"How will you get to the King's tower, you wonder?" posed Kesi. "You will find an ally who will shepherd you to there."

The cloud of smoke was changing again, the image inside it morphing. The adventurers sat at complete attention, wondering who at this point could be such an exceptional ally to them. They had faith in their fellow castle-dwellers and would have been grateful for their support, but as they had yet to succeed in storming the second tower, it seemed unlikely that they would manage to do so now. As the apparation began to take shape, Nestor and Dion wondered whether one of their comrades from the road was on the way to the castle to help them. Perhaps it was Samer's old rival Meldrum, or Arcturus the shapeshifter, or even Jordan, the dragon who had eaten them…

The image focused and the heroes stared in disbelieving astonishment. Samer was the first one to make a disappointed face and speak the name with the utmost skepticism:

" _Fat_ -Fat?"

* * *

The others were preparing in their own ways. Honesty led an open prayer to Ehlonna for luck on their quest. Nestor dined, doing his best to make sure that no bread or cheese went to waste. With his speaking privileges restored, Samer went about helpfully improving things where he could: he multiplied the food store, regenerated all of the burnt candles, and began changing the makeshift garments of the mice into finer-fitting ones until the tailors expressed their discontent with this indirect criticism of their work (a compromise was reached wherein Samer only created mouse-sized armor and weapons, which no one else was able to produce without a forge). Meanwhile, Dion sat in the King's private quarters, where he placated himself with the tiny abacus that Samer had conjured for him while his father petted him between the ears.

The King was as surprised as anyone at the revelation that his pet was to play a role in saving the castle and preserving their collective future, and he was not pleased. Years ago, convincing him that his only son was capable of going adventuring on behalf of the crown had cost substantial effort, and he initially felt no less complacent with the thought of his prized cat undertaking a dangerous mission. However, the Oracles had been clear about the part Fat-Fat would have to fulfill in the saving them.

As the monsters resumed their old forms in increasing numbers, Fat-Fat was the only one other than Hyle's own cat that would not be inclined to leave the keep; he lived in the towers, after all. The Oracles had predicted that the Persian would soon be resuming his natural state, and sure enough, scouts had reported soon thereafter that the reformed puffball had been spotted scurrying down the stairs to the common area. The Oracles claimed that the bridge connecting the towers would be one of the last places still guarded by the remaining beasts (scouts confirmed this, too), and to get across it without engaging in foolhardy combat, a non-rodent animal would be required to subvert the monsters' senses. It was up to the adventurers to not only get to Fat-Fat, but to convince the fearful cat to bring them to the King's tower.

No matter how troublesome it might be, the adventurers agreed that this method would be infinitely more efficient and safer than a second battle with the monsters.

Dion began to review this plan in his mind, but his thoughts conscientiously drifted to his father. Perceiving the unspoken feelings of others had always been a troublesome task for the Prince, but patience on his father's behalf had contributed greatly to the son's ability to interact with others, and the King's example had made it clear to Dion that there was indeed incentive for never giving up on this never-ending task. As he sat there, he would have much preferred to remain in his relaxed state, but he knew that his father would likely be feeling apprehensive. He did not blame him, even though he did not fear the future at all, and thought it best to demonstrate his courage to the King by initiating the quest without being bidden.

With great poise, he set his abacus aside, rose up from beneath the King's paw, and turned to face his sire.

"Papa, I need to go make sure that my friends aren't eaten like they almost were on our last trip."

This declaration jumped his memory, and he reached into his pocket.

"I won this for you" he added, holding out his paw to show the King the petrified crystal that Samer had been nice enough to shrink along with his rapier.

The taller mouse took the stone and examined it. Always regal and collected to his subjects, the King allowed his brow to rise in surprise in the presence of his son.

"This is million-year wood" he declared. "It is extremely lucky."

"It's not working" said Dion, thinking back to the near-miss with the chimeras.

The King looked at Dion, who knew at once that his father was going to insist that he keep it instead, simply because it was supposedly lucky. Before the Prince's frustration at this confounding turn could set in, however, the King did something unexpected: he retrieved the sword that Samer had created for him, set the crystal onto the floor, and cut the crystal in two before his son's surprised face.

Dion already guessed his father's meaning before the King carried the halved crystal over to him. He did not think much of the gesture, given that it had come at the expense of the present he had spent the last many days anticipating to give to his father, but he let the older mouse say what he wanted to, regardless of his personal disappointment.

"One half for you, to help you remain safe" the King said significantly, and placed part of the damaged gift into his son's hand.

Dion looked at it, and was surprised by what he saw. The King had delivered such a precise slice that it had not truly tarnished the crystal, which was now smaller but still slightly. Additionally, it was extremely pleasant to feel along the cut, which was smoother than the surface of a mirror.

"And one half for me, so you will know that I am safe" the King finished, closing the paw in which he held his own portion.

He placed his other paw on the back of Dion's neck in a paternal gesture.

"We both worry about each other so much, don't we?" he said, looking into the young mouse's face with an adoring smile. "But these will remind us that we do not have to, for I am a great King and my son is the bravest and cleverest rogue in all the lands. Think of how even greater of a ruler you will be."

The thought of the crown passing was not an idea that Dion liked to entertain, but he understood what his father had meant: there had been no need to worry himself the way he had when he did not know what had become of the King. Looking down at his half of the crystal, he stepped forward and allowed his father's arms to envelop him. King Tears pressed a kiss to the top of Dion's head and held him for as long as he could. He had braced himself, but was clearly disappointed that the night could not end at that moment, with nothing more to worry about than Dion's upcoming birthday.

"Just keep being careful" he bid. "Your life is important to me."

Dion nodded against his father's chest, and held the crystal shard against his own. Despite the tenderness of this exchange, the rogue's unique mind was already heating up like a furnace in preparation for the mission ahead. He did not mind being a mouse, but could not abide the thought of his relationship with the King being endangered by the schemes of a devious druid. Hyle had imposed on one of the few things in the world that brought calm to the atypical Prince, and for that, there was no alternative to soundly stopping him and ensuring that he would never be able to mount such a scheme ever again. As his father cuddled him in what the King might have thought was a moment of peace, Prince Dion was realizing that he did not care whether or not Hyle still had a pulse, come morning's first light – all he knew was that he would pay for even thinking that he could do what he pleased in Castle Tears.


	4. Chapter 4

The Castle Crawlers

* * *

Chapter 4

* * *

Returning to the common area by the route that the mice had designated was less strenuous than climbing the enormous tapestry, but the narrow, sloping path between the walls still made Nestor wish profoundly for the ability to just walk down the stairs. Because of the cramped state of the passageways – with their splintery runs and dust sticking in the air, thick as spiders' webs – only a small procession accompanied them. While Captain Ko and her yeomice were as of good company now as they had always been, they did not fully alleviate the sensation of being in a dungeon within their own home. The mood had been agreeable enough while the adventurers had joined their now-tiny neighbors in a send-off meal, but now, they already felt miles away from all warmth and gaiety.

The warrior almost couldn't blame Samer for trying to lighten the mood. Almost.

"Nestor, listen to this!"

"You better not."

"No, I mean it, listen! What holds the wizard's magic tomes together?"

"I don't want-"

"The spell binding!"

Samer's laughter carried down the passageway, but even if everyone had laughed along with him, the chance of it actually alleviating the gravity of the situation would have been small. The stakes were simply too high for jocularity.

They emerged among the beams above the tabletops of the reception hall, where the enchanted torches still burned in their brackets. For the mice, the 15 feet between ceiling and furniture might as well have been a drop into a canyon, but with magic back at their disposal, descent would be no problem. Best of all, one of the tabletops had become the platform for the royal pet they sought. Already a large cat, Fat-Fat looked like a furry wyrm from this distance.

"You need to stay here" Dion directed Captain Ko and her underlings. "If he gets afraid, we'll need to chase him."

His fellow adventurers agreed with this, and the guards bowed to the order of their prince.

"Good luck" bade the captain.

"I don't think we'll need luck!" Samer said, chummily slapping Honesty on his back. "Now that we have our dear cleric back to full praying capacity, we can count on the favor of the pantheon to- Oh, bugger."

The slap had caused Honesty to become unbalanced and fall headlong into the deep, a mildly exasperated expression on his face as he spun towards the table beneath. Samer leapt after him sheepishly, followed by his fellows. The four of them shot towards a sudden impact until Nestor applied a coordinated heat spell. Air rushed up from around the table, causing Fat-Fat to scramble his gaze around in alarm and completely miss the scene of four clothed, armed mice slowing in their descent until they floated to a billowy stop on the opposite end of the table.

"Nice!" called Ko, her voice emanating from practically another layer of the atmosphere. "We'll let you know if anything's coming down the stairs! Then we'll follow for as long as we can!"

The squeaking from skywards made Fat-Fat look up, his green eyes wide, and by the time his gaze leveled, the group before him had collected itself and Samer had apologized to Honesty. The big white feline started as he realized he was no longer alone, endangering his balance on the table as he drew close to the edge. Then, as he comprehended by inches that he was faced with prey, he stepped forward on thick cotton paws with his scrunched face pressed forth with interest.

"Easy, now" urged Nestor his fellows. "We don't want to scare him. Or hurt him. Does anybody have any ideas how we can keep from doing either and still make him do what we want?"

Honesty strode forward, holding his flail before him and his free paw open wide, causing Fat-Fat to come to a brief pause.

"In the name of Erastil" squeaked the cleric. "Peace be with you, cherished one. I address you by the grace of Old Deadeye. Hear my plea, that we may aid each other in our time of need. Preserve us, cherished one, as we have preserved you. Serve us, cherished one, as we have served you. A moment of your indulgence for the cascades of cream that have been your lifelong tribute."

Fat-Fat huffed in bewilderment, breathing hard through his flat nose. Then he pounced at Honesty, his front paws coming down on the tabletop like a pair of anvils. Honesty fell onto his back and retreated towards his fellows. Samer giggled as he helped pick him up.

"I admire your persistence" he commented. "That didn't work with the dragon, but it might have worked with this one, huh?"

"I should have known that Jordan was a devotee of Bahapsumut" said Honesty, straightening his vestments. "This cat, however, appears to be beyond my pantheon."

"Good! Then it's my turn" sang the wizard, pushing to the front of his comrades and stepping towards the cat. "Kitty! How about some tea?... I _jest_ , you guys."

Samer inserted his crystal ball into the curve of his crook and held the instrument aloft. The ball began glow with pulsing light, changing color from blue to green to yellow to red to purple. The wizard swayed back and forth, rocking on his knees as he began to hum loudly. Fat-Fat followed his movement with suspicious eyes.

"This magic crystal was found at the bottom of the ocean" Samer crooned. "If it were not magic, you could resist its glow. Now, you are beginning to feel calm and content. Your eyes are growing heavy. You are falling under my trance now. Let your eyes close…close…clo- HEY! MINE!"

Fat-Fat had grabbed at Samer's cane. He yanked it out of the black mouse's paws and threw himself onto his side, gnawing at it.

"Nooo!" fretted the wizard, pulling at his ears. "Nestor, _do_ something! I can't stand drool on my things!"

Instead of Nestor, it was Dion who moved forward. Stepping around the agonizing Samer, he walked up to stand beside the preoccupied Fat-Fat, whose attention he gained by impressively clicking his tongue. The feline looked up at him and reached out a paw as large as Dion, but the rogue was standing out of his reach. Dion placed his own paw into his clothing and pulled out a tiny sack, out of which he poured a quantity of granular, moss-like fragments. With a puff, he blew the material over Fat-Fat's outstretched paw. The cat snatched back his limb with an expression of indignation, but was immediately overcome with the new fragrance of his paw. As the puffy cat excitedly sniffed, nuzzled, and rubbed his paw over his face, Dion calmly stepped closer, picked up Samer's crook and ball, and returned them to their owner. His friends observed him with ironically accusatory stares.

"Couldn't have brought that out a minute earlier, could you?" asked Nestor.

"I wanted a show" Dion explained unabashedly, before looking to Samer. "Cats can't see colors like that, I think."

The subsequent taming of Fat-Fat was a relatively easy. Calmed by the mint, the cat became amicable enough to be approached by all of the mice, and between Honesty's and Samer's efforts, he became agreeable to suggestions. It took him a while to make the effort, but eventually, Fat-Fat stood back up with the four mice sitting astride his back, clinging to his fur for balance. Riding a cat was not nearly as easy as riding a horse, or even a dragon, and the entire party was nearly thrown as Fat-Fat leapt from the table. The king's pet was slow for a feline, but he was infinitely faster than the mice. He whisked them away - across the hall and up the stairs – with a speed that had hours ago seemed natural but now felt like flying.

As Captain Ko watched the adventurers and their cream-colored mount disappear out of sight, she exchanged glances with her guardsmice, conveying hope and humiliation at the same time. The inhabitants of this castle had seen much more dignified times than this.

* * *

Luckily, the bull-man who had broken the door of the second floor's landing off its hinges was nowhere to be found now. Fat-Fat casually trotted across the horizontal door and over the threshold, into the center which branched off into the private abodes of the king's court. His passengers rode at the ready, their little heads turning in all directions with Samer prepared to fend off enemies with his crystal. They thoroughly hoped it would not come to this, given Fat-Fat's meekness and the certainty that having an attack fired from over his head would cause him to panic, mesmerizing spell or not. Luckily, nothing of the sort occurred, and the quintet was able to move unmolested through the second level to the door that connected the tower to the bridge. The door was not even locked: Nestor was able to turn its handle using the wire that Samer had shrunk for him and the wizard's magic to maneuver it over the grip. As the door opened, the mice collectively slid from the cat's back and took refuge beneath his body, under his abdomen, where his ample fluff would hopefully provide sufficient cover from any creature looking down from above.

The door opened to cool, clear night and the narrow bridge. It was the newest addition to the keep, and unlike the towers, it was constructed of wood. It had a tall railing that could be fitted with shielding in times of siege, and spanned the length of 100 feet from one tower to the next. The torches sitting in the brackets by the doors were not lit, maintaining the delusion for outsiders that the castle was completely quiet. For some reason, dim illumination from below revealed that the torches in the bailey were lit. However, the most pertinent features were the two bird-men positioned like guards halfway along the bridge, clearly aware of an intruder's presence.

The Oracles had predicted that the transformed animals were being manipulated towards the single purpose of controlling the mice. Given this, they were unlikely to show the same aggression towards other animals. It was a reasonable hypothesis, but now that the adventurers were directly tasked with testing it, it seemed very, very risky. Fat-Fat certainly seemed discontent with it: the mice felt his fur stiffen as he beheld the two monsters from afar, and if it were not for the spell he was under, he clearly would have already fled. Honesty and Samer managed to contain his anxiety, communicating that he was as protected from them as he was from the ravens who charged him when he sat in front of the glass window in the king's chambers. They reminded Fat-Fat that by going forward, he would actually be closer to said chambers and the large bed he always slept in. With wary gradualness, the cat began to creep forward, reaching his legs out long while he kept his body so low to the ground that the mice had to grab at his fur and be pulled along the walkway.

The chimeras that eyed them with angled gazes had once been pigeons that fed from the streets and nested in town. They appeared to be in a rapid state of devolution, having already shrunken to the size of children and grown feathers where there had previously been none. As the adventurers moved between the two of them, they glimpsed the grotesque sight of calves reverting into tarsus and the clawed toes on bony feet that seemed at least as capable of inflicting injury as any human appendage. Samer – frontmost along Fat-Fat's body – had only glimpsed their facial features as the door had opened, but he mentally embellished the image of their beaked countenances, with their red eyes slowly shifting 'round to the sides of their heads. The bird-men stood restlessly, their claws tapping the wooden floor as they shifted weight between legs, and the wizard felt the fear of uncertainty when he could not tell whether they were preparing to attack or were simply aching to fly off into the sky.

Fat-Fat did not dare glance up as he slunk between the guards. Fortune seemed to favor the group, for even though the avian eyes followed the cat, they did not attack. Whether this was because the prediction of the Oracles had been true or because the magic controlling the monsters had subsided enough to dampen their inclination to attack was unclear, but either way, it permitted the cat and the mice to reach the opposite end of the bridge without trouble. Samer and Nestor scurried forth, hurriedly opening the door in the same manner that they had the first one, while Honesty and Dion crouched low with their weapons at the ready. Fat-Fat actually dashed inside before they had a chance to get back underneath him, but to their collective surprise, the bird-men did not attack. They were not even looking in their direction anymore. As Nestor finally pushed the door closed, he peeked around the corner and found that the monsters had disappeared.

"Hope they've already grown wings" he declared as the door latched.

Fat-Fat had run off into the center of the tower, and the mice followed his mournful yowls to where he was scratching at the closed door to the king's bedroom. They had intended to ride him to the topmost level of the tower, where they predicted Hyle to be fortified in his quarters, but the cat's tortured complaints and plaintive looks made it impossible for them to deny him his comfort zone.

"Check if there's anything inside, first" Nestor advised as he opened the door with his wire.

There was no slowing Fat-Fat, however, who darted again inside even as the door was still opening. The mice rushed after him, but there had been no reason to worry: the royal domicile was free from monsters. It was a warm room, decorated in green and copper, and in their rodent state, the adventurers found even more appreciation in its calming design than they had before. It was cozy, with a plushy rug, clannish furniture, and light curtains drawn against the night. Fat-Fat leapt onto the bed, where he turned around on the spot and curled up defensively among the blanket and sheets, still unmade from the night that the entire populace had been transformed.

"I forgot how nice this place is" Nestor commented as he and his friends looked around.

The room had an emotional effect on the mice that had nothing to do with its design or its signs of luxurious comfort. It felt like a sanctuary – a momentary refuge from the task facing them and, simultaneously, a reminder of what they were fighting for. One of the castle's few oil paintings hung here, and it depicted the king and Dion seated on their thrones, dressed in white and lavender robes. The artwork was several years old and showed a much younger and paler Dion, but the king looked very much like the friends remembered him, before he had been turned into a mouse.

It occurred to them all at that they were already getting used to regarding each other as mice. Yes, they were fighting for a future wherein they never had to look at each other's tails again, but their presence had already begun to seem natural. Getting around the castle had become more difficult, but they had to admit to themselves that the biggest obstacle was the threat of monsters. If they had a chance to apply their creativity and utilize cooperation in the absence of antagonists, this place would cease to be an obstacle and be their home again. In the king's bedroom, it already felt like it.

Disciplining themselves for such complacency, the warrior and the cleric and the wizard turned away from the painting to find their rogue climbing onto the meridienne couch. Dion took a seat on the cushion and gazed down on his comrades as though from a very high throne.

"Is everything well?" Honesty conscientiously called up to Dion, who shook his head.

"No, it isn't" the inimitable prince replied. "But that's fine. Things will work out, even if they aren't well."

While his comrades took time to ponder this logic, Dion hopped back down to the floor, where he landed on all fours before righting back up onto his hind legs. He stepped among his fellows and urged them on.

"Let's go. The night's getting old, and Hyle hasn't made his unexpected attempt to stop us yet."

They left Fat-Fat lying on the bed with his cautious eyes watching them go, and headed back the way they had come. The floors of the two towers were not identical – one of the last lines of defense against invaders – and the arching stairwell branched off to either side of the bridge entry door. With Samer's magical stamina back to full capacity, climbing the stairs would be no problem at all; they could float all the way to the top by his incantation.

Dion was already anticipating this part of the trip, glad at the prospect of having a few moments to ready himself, as the mice stepped back into the landing area and saw the door to the bridge standing open again – wider than it had been even when they had entered. Dion was not surprised, having been on enough quests to anticipate last-moment resistance as his friends and he neared the final chamber of a dungeon or the center of a labyrinth. He did not even need to draw his friends' attention to the detail as they all took defensive positions, prepared to retreat if necessary.

As was his duty, Dion sensed something coming before he saw it. He, as well as his comrades, was expecting more monsters – potentially the last among Hyle's inhuman guard. He was _not_ expecting an enormous hand to reach through the doorway, filling it entirely with the breadth of its wrist and grabbing at them.

What happened next happened so fast that all of the mice's reactions were made purely in reflex, beyond all thought. Nestor and Honesty leapt backwards, the former swinging his chain lock. Dion dove sideways. Less quick on his feet, Samer sent a spell at the hand that detonated upon its knuckles in a fiery cloud. Instantly, the air in the landing became thin and filled with ash. Scrambling to his footpaws, Dion squinted through the soot and saw Samer's glowing crystal ball rushing past him as its owner was dragged towards the door between the knuckles of the titanic hand. Dion sprang onto the appendage, and by the sound of various metal weapons battering down upon its woody hull, he knew that his comrades had done the same. If the being which this limb belonged to felt pain at this, it did not convey it, as the hand was smoothly pulled out of the smoky tower and into the open air. Suddenly, Dion was clinging to the sylvan surface as the hand's angle shifted upright. He caught a glimpse of the massive body attached to the hand – tawny and silver, and having climbed the side of the tower – before finding his tail and hind legs dangling high over the torch-lit lawn of the bailey.

As the mice squeaked chaotically, the creature flicked its wrist. The action sent all four of the adventurers falling towards the ground. Dion tried to gain control of his momentum and turn backwards to land on his footpaws, but he hit the grassy earth before mastering his motion. Had he still the mass of his human form, the impact would have been fatal. Now, the blow to the back of his head merely caused the world to go dark and quiet for what seemed like a very long time. In truth, he was only unconscious for a few moments.

* * *

"Dion? _DION._ Dion, can you hear me?... Oh no, not now. Nerull, if you stick your nose into this, I will enact _such_ an anathema against you, not even the fiends will acknowledge your existence... Oh, thank the pantheon!"

The rogue opened his eyes, in pain and feeling dangerously vulnerable. He wanted to tell Honesty to back off and stop hovering over him, but for the first few moments, trying to speak made him feel like vomiting. He wanted to back up, even if that meant pushing himself into the ground, but with uncharacteristic urgency, Honesty had taken his paw and was pulling him into a sitting position.

"I'm so sorry, Dion. I abominate doing this, but this isn't the time you would want to be prone."

As Dion regained his bearings and Nestor and Samer fought through the grass to reach him and Honesty, the whole party was observed by the giant that had pulled them out of the tower and flung them asunder. Dion got a better look at it while the others fussed about him, and kept what he saw in perspective. As mice, the biped before them towered like a titan, but Dion judged its size against the tower behind it and knew that the thing was not even 15 feet tall. They had fought monsters in the past that could have picked it up and played with it like a doll.

However, while the party had seen a slew of creatures in their adventures, this thing was unique. For one thing, Dion was not convinced that it was a creature but a machine. Timber membrane covered it in plates like armor, leaving many spaces upon its form uncovered and therein revealing a skeleton of springs and cogwheels. The thing made grinding noises when it moved but also produced a soft clicking sound as though it contained an immense ratchet (if he had not been so preoccupied on the bridge, Dion was certain he would have noticed this). The being was headless, but the rest of its body was apelike. A massive torso was its main feature, with short legs (allowing for easy maneuvering in the cramped bailey) and arms long enough to reach over ten feet in any direction. Currently, the thing sat hunkered, facing the mice with its hands resting flat-palmed on the ground, one of them blackened and scratched from Samer's spell and the mice's early counterassault. It made no move as the mice strategized, though it was clearly observing them.

"Let us count our blessings" Honesty said as he healed Dion's concussion and Samer's scrapes. "It is not often that we come across a reserved gatekeeper."

"Did Hyle build that?" Nestor demanded. "It's not enough that he can make that and turn folk into mice, he also needs to host an ascension? Let's just kill this thing and get to him so I can knock his head."

"I don't take kindly to tail-grabbers, but we shouldn't just up and slay it" said Samer. "Mayhap it's but a poor, possessed beasty like the rest."

"Kill it" Dion weighed in.

"It hasn't killed us" Honesty pointed out. "…Perhaps not for lack of trying, but it's not trying now. If it's simply barring our way…"

"It's standing in the way of everybody not being mice" interrupted Nestor. "I have no idea how long beating up Hyle will take. We are getting past this thing right now, whether we kill it or enchant it or adopt it as a pet."

"I've always wanted a pet that doesn't drool…" Samer mused.

Despite this non sequitur, the group was in agreement about their tactics: they would attempt the nonviolent approach, then they would try to subdue the being, and if that did not work, lethal measures would be employed. Nestor stepped in front of his comrades, chain lock and shillelagh at the ready, and spoke to the thing in as loud of a squeak as he could. Over the course of his short address, he heard his voice getting considerably louder and knew that the wizard was amplifying his tone.

"Attention, animate! We're prepared to forget that you just attacked us, under the condition that that was the last time! Let us go, don't get in our way again, and everything will be fine! Try anything like that again, and you'll be immensely lucky if there are enough parts of you left over to build a longcase clock with! Don't underestimate the ire of a mouse who's fighting for the ability to raid the smokehouse!"

Reaction to the warrior's words was immediate. The mice tensed as a particularly loud _CLICK_ inside of the being was followed a cranking sound and the sight of the creature's thoracic plate – its carapace – folding upwards like the canvas of marketplace stall. A spotted feline face on a humanoid body looked out at them from behind a panel like a miniaturized version of a ship's pilot board.

"First of all, I am not an animate" he said, in a tone pungent with aloofness. "Second, consider these choices instead: either you stay where you are for just a little while longer and nothing happens, or you get uppity and I smash all of you into pâté."

The mice stared. Most of them jumped to the conclusion that they were looking at one of Hyle's soldiers – potentially the last over which the druid's spell still held sway – but as frequently was the case when it came to critical first impressions, Dion came to a more enlightened opinion. He could recognize that particular variety of standoffishness anywhere. Fat-Fat was a spoiled whiner, but even he could not compare with the arrogance and pomposity of the prince's least favorite animal in the castle.

"Richael" he identified.

"Richael!" Samer was first to exclaim, glancing wide-eyed from the rogue to the feline in the robot. "Kitty! Don't you remember us? I mean, we used to look different, but hey – I always give you milk when I'm here!"

"Oh, right – the wizard who can conjure any food from thin air but only ever gave me ice cold, watery whitewash" answered the cat-man with a cold smirk. "You've tried to make a windup man before, haven't you? Master Hyle didn't even need to crack those moldy tomes of yours to build this one."

Samer fell silent at the rebuke, and even from the distance, Richael's bright eyes could be seen crinkling in delight at the sight. The suit of metal and wood that he wore rocked back and forth in apparent glee at causing distress.

"I'm sure you have questions, so listen to me" he said. "What I said was true. I will flatten all of you if you try to get past me, but if you behave yourselves, then we'll only have to endure each other's company for a little while longer. Very shortly, Master Hyle will have completed his business and then he and I will take leave of this place. You'll never have to see us again, and all the little animals will stay as they used to be. There'll be no more monsters, no more fighting, no more being chased…well, unless you fail to control the dogs. But that'll be your matter to deal with as you please, so it's a generous deal, really. A little patience in exchange for a lifetime of autonomy."

Nestor raised his voice again, dislike replacing his fresh shock. Offensive or not, the transformed and newly-loquacious Richael clearly had knowledge of the vilified druid's plan.

"Richael…" he began, wondering whether the cat remembered being shooed by the warrior years ago. "What exactly has Hyle been doing?"

"He's been preparing our departure" replied the cat-man. "And to do that, he just needed to withdraw a magical boon he'd placed over all of you and the castle. He had a feeling that you all would not be in agreement with his methods and try to exact revenge, so he made sure your animals would keep you away. But like I said, very soon, everything will be back to the way it-"

"Is he turning us back?" the warrior interrupted, uninclined to take for granted anything the druid's cat claimed but nevertheless determined in his pursuit of information.

Richael fell silent as he was spoken over, and though his face was impassive, his ears rose into sharp horns.

"As I was saying…" he said after a prolonged pause. "Everything will be back to the way it's supposed to be."

"Is. He. Turning. Us. Back" Nestor demanded, his tiny teeth gritted.

"Back?" repeated Richael, in an innocently confrontational tone. "You mean you didn't always seem as puny as you do now? My mistake. If you only knew how we've held back until now, for your sakes."

Becoming riled, Nestor turned from the armored Richael to his comrades and found silent agreement among them. Time had become too precious for them to be toyed with in this regard. They would not be the ones to initiate a fight, but it was too late not to chance one. They lined up across from Richael and his suit and drew their weapons, to the amusement of the feline.

"You're seriously going to try to get past me?" he chortled.

"There'll be no trying in it" replied Honesty, his dreamy voice a stark contrast to his more focused expression. Hee continued to speak as he and his fellows began marching. "O angry puss, may you heed my prayer. We seek peace in our dealings with you, as well as with your master, but we will more than match any strike leveled against us. Do not bar our way, for in one way or another, you will be budged."

The troupe walked forth in silence, parting the blades of grass before them in a steady step until the form of Richael's monstrosity loomed over there, outlined brightly by the light of the torches blazing on either side of the tower doorway behind him. The cat-man looked down at the mice but they resolutely did not meet his gaze. Their determination translated into a far holdout that this situation may yet be resolved without combat. With some foes, this approach worked, and with others it did not, but the mice had no way of ascertaining what kind of a foe Richael was, yet. He would be powerful within this suit, for certain, and all of the resolve in the world might not be equal to it. Nevertheless, the adventurers held out. They wanted to see Hyle punished, but more than that, they wanted to have their home back the way it was. All of them had lived considerable portions of their lives under siege, thanks to the decades of war faced by the castle, and they were still tired of needing to fight while in their own home. The castle, though it also housed antisocial druids and snooty cats, was their sanctuary, and they hoped so very much that, even in his state of subservience to Hyle, the cat would recognize this.

However, even if he did, Richael did not appear to care about the matter.

 _CRASH!_

The blackened fist of the machine suit came down on the ground exactly where the mice had walked a split-second ago, before the alert Samer rushed all of them backwards in separate directions with a blast of warm air. They landed in the grass several yards away, in time to see Richael shaking his head at them as the plate that had revealed him creaked closed again.

"Budge this" he said, before disappearing completely.

In their state of preparedness, the mice were undaunted. Being transformed and needing to contend with enormous falling chiffoniers was one thing, but an attack by a powerful enemy barring their way was nothing new; everyone among them was an old hand at this. As a group, the mice experienced a rush like adrenaline as Honesty's prayer to the pantheon enhanced their agility. Edging closer, Samer heckled a spell at their enemy that turned the ground upon which the machine stood black with flames that shot up to the robot's waist. Richael uttered a groan of frustration inside of his armor and blundered out of the fire, only to be blasted back into it by Nestor's lock, slung with such velocity from the end of its chain that it might have been shot from a firearm. It struck the suit in the chest – splintering wood like the swing of an axe – and the machine fell onto its back. For a moment, the mechanical beast writhed in the flames, its operator cursing, and when it was finally able to free itself, its wooden plates were sizzling and the air was almost cozy with the smell of burning wood.

"Hyle's equipped you very inadequately for fighting a handful of rodents!" shouted Nestor, whirling his chain. "Give up now or we'll have a bonfire!"

Richael responded by raising the clockwork being's arms, and the panels covering its forearms snapped open. Clearly the counterattack had unnerved Hyle's pet, who was no longer interested in merely protecting the tower. There came a fierce mechanical whining noise and the mice dove for cover as sharp-ridged gears shot out at them, spinning as they flew and lodging themselves firmly in the earth. The adventurers formed a group and Samer enacted a flaming shield strong enough to disintegrate the projectiles. Honesty placed a hand on the wizard's back, bolstering the defensive casting, and they pressed forward as one, Nestor huddling in their wake with his weapons at the ready while the gears kept coming. The moment they entered striking distance, the projectile attack ceased and Richael's slammed his machine's hand into the ground again. Expecting this, Samer dropped his shield, and Honesty and he dashed one way while Nestor dashed the other. Hopping onto the metacarpal of the machine's hand, the warrior swung his shillelagh at the mechanical wrist joint of the hand – crushing it.

Nestor jumped back to avoid a slap from the other hand, and he and his fellows regrouped outside of the giant's reach. Inside of his damaged contraption, Richael was cursing again.

"Damn it! You stupid mice!" came the hollow howl as the mechanical creature inspected the extent of damage to its form.

"How many stupid mice does it take to topple a dumb cat?" teased Samer, twirling his crook. "…C'mon, ask how much. The answer's really witty."

The answer, however, would never be heard, as the next moment, the machine suddenly fell onto its knees. The mice darted backwards, but quickly realized that whatever was happening was of greater worry to Richael than to them. An awful crunching and snapping noise emanated from within the suit, along with a frightened gasp from its occupant.

"What…! What did you do?!" cried Richael. "What's… _Rrrrgh!_ Come _on!_ "

As Richael fought to maintain control of the machine now holding itself over the ground with shaking arms, Dion calmly rejoined his friends from his unnoticed excursion into the suit. Getting behind distracted opponents to strike them was a regular tactic of his, but he had yet to enter inside one of them before, and he looked mildly exhilarated at the experience.

"Magic powers it" he explained to his troupe. "But only the engine. It's still running, but a couple of hosepipes are blocked now. And a valve or two may be crammed."

"Brilliant" declared Samer with a grin. "I say we put in our Dion for a medal. Premier Corker and Stoppler of the Royal House of T-"

An explosion from the machine made all the mice recoil. It had emanated from the being's back, where an open fire was now spreading. However, the speed of the fire was not equal to that of the hissing, whistling noise that grew louder with each moment. Everyone knew at once that the explosion had only been the first one.

"Oh bugger" said Nestor. "We need to- WHOA!"

He and the rest of his group had started forward, but with what must have been the last of its coordinated strength, the machine's undamaged hand lashed out and grabbed at them, missing Nestor by less than an inch. The mice withdrew, and what happened next did so too fast for them to do anything.

"No, no, no!" cried Richael from his inside the contraption. "Hyle! _Help!_ "

Honesty spoke a prayer of salvation as fast as he could, but he could not stumble over the words fast enough as the whistling reached a crescendo and the sabotaged engine exceeded its capacity.

" _Hyyyle! Help meeeeee!_ " Richael managed to mewl before the second explosion ripped outwards into the bailey and Samer had to enact a shield around his friends again.

* * *

The roar had been enormous and Richael had fallen silent in the din, but the mice assumed nothing. Too many times in their own experience had the villain risen up from his own ashes immediately following his defeat. They had to be certain. So they rushed into the wreckage, clambering over dislodged pieces of shell and scampering around machine parts, avoiding the fire all the way. The flames had not penetrated the thorax, and it was dark and cramped inside. It was surprisingly voluminous, to the point that all were surprised when they did not find its occupant immediately. It was not until Samer's crystal lit up and gave them a warm orange light to search with that Honesty's voice called out from the vicinity of the machine's abdominal region: "He's here, my friends."

The remaining mice crawled and climbed towards the sound of Honesty's voice and found him standing by the horizontal base of the pedestal that had supported the machine's control panel. He was leaning on his flail and regarding the remains of Richael, which lay under the enormous ratchet that Dion had predicted. As the engine had exploded, this part of it had collapsed onto its operator, who – much to everyone's surprise – no longer maintained his humanoid form. Apparently Richael's bipedal body had been as much of an enchantment as that placed over the other castle animals, and with no life force to bind it in place, the spell had evaporated. A sleek, medium-sized cat lay beneath the debris, its lower half obscured by the machinery that had crushed it. Its eyes were closed and its paws were outstretched as though in sleep. Richael's whiskers were bent and disheveled.

"I can't believe how easy that was" commented Nestor in a hollow tone, regarding their defeated foe.

"Bluster and banter can seem very powerful" Honesty remarked, looking at his feet.

"He was just a cat in a clock" said Dion.

Nestor sobbed loudly, and the other mice promptly looked 'round at him. He had tucked away his shillelagh but his chain lock still dangled from his paw as he raised his paws to his face, placing them over his eyes and assuming the look of crying mouse motifs.

"I… I… I…!" he sobbed, stammering as he wept. "I…d-d-didn't want to-to-to kill the kitty…! He's n-not a monster or anything… _he's j-just a k-k-kitty!_ "

The domino effect was instantaneous, with Samer dissolving into tears at once and Honesty fighting not to follow suit.

"He's so tiny" whimpered the wizard. "I mean, we're tinier, but still…"

"What a woeful night" said the cleric, dabbing his eyes with his collar. "What cruel personalities orchestrated this tragedy? How tragic… How sad that little cats should suffer…"

Dion did not cry, but he did feel agitation at his comrades doing so at a time when they should be hurrying on. He looked upon the body of the beaten Richael and felt frustrated that, even in death, the cat practiced a means of hindering them. He turned away from the pitiable sight and crawled out from the wreckage and clear of the fire, letting Honesty say whatever prayer he thought appropriate. He waited in the grass until his friends followed him, wiping their eyes and trying to compose themselves.

"Sorry, Dion" Samer and Nestor muttered simultaneously, and Honesty made a noise of agreement.

The rogue nodded.

"It's fine. We need to go."

The machine had collapsed in front of the tower's ground entrance, and while the door could not be opened enough to admit a human of any size, Nestor was able to pull it ajar enough with his wire for his party to squeeze inside. It seemed odd that this door should be unlocked while its twin – the door connecting the first tower to the bailey – remained barred, but everyone quietly theorized that it had been left open in case Richael had needed to go to Hyle. Nestor had to bully away the sniffles upon wondering when had been the last time the cat and master had seen each other.

On the ground floor of the tower, the group had anticipated heading upward, but Samer never even commenced the levitation spell when it became clear to all that they had already reached their target. While a wider staircase to their left circled upwards, a more cramped flight to their right led to a narrow door some ten feet down. The door led to a cellar for storing food, but judging by the light shining from underneath the door, it seemed likely that it had become the base of operations for the last portion of Hyle's centuries-old conspiracy.

"Everyone done sorrowing?" asked Dion, and was answered with affirming silence. "Then we're going. He might try to trick and trap us, so watch out."

The prince actually led the way down the stairs – hopping one at a time as his comrades floated down on Samer's magic. They caught up with him at the foot of the stair, where the light brimming out from under the door caused them to cast tiny shadows on the floor. The sense of unitedness that had settled in when they had faced Richael was returning to the group, and each of them gripped their weapons a little more firmly. Nestor stepped forth, but Samer stopped him with a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.

"Perhaps the element of surprise would be of use, here?" he asked. "…Oh, please? I might not get to blow anything else up tonight!"

Time was short. There was no allowance for arguing, and besides, the wizard had a point. Nestor stepped back, but as Samer directed a blast of flame at the door that instantly disintegrated the wood, he and his mates rushed forth anew – into a confrontation that would forever change their lives and the fate of their home.


End file.
